Abstract Snow GeesePosted by Marc on January 4, 2011.
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During this holiday season, we were cheated out of a real snow event. The spectacular blizzard generally dumped its snow along the coast. Instead of sulking about the missed storm, we decided to head for the snow on the Eastern Shore of Maryland to see wildlife at the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge.
It was cold, windy, and late in the afternoon when we pulled off the road to watch the snow geese. Every fifteen or twenty minutes the blizzard of snow geese would spook and thousands of them would obliterate the horizon with a honking swarm of undulating geese.
When you look at this photo, initially you don't know what it is. Actually, reproduced as small as it is here, you can't easily see that it contains geese. When you enlarge the image, you can pick out their black-tipped wings, a few heads and bodies, but this remains an abstract photo. It reminds me of Escher's Tessellations except that nature is never as geometric as Escher's work.
I love photographing birds in the snow. The white landscape makes a giant reflector that illuminates them so that you can see every feather on their breast and every wrinkle on their feet. We spent most of our day at Blackwater Refuge watching the bald eagles standing around. Bald eagle watching usually entails lots of watching them do nothing. They stand on the ice for an hour. Then they move to a branch and sit there motionless for another hour. (Don't they get cold.) The show ends when they fly away. In this shot, upon departing, the eagle graced me with a flyover that perfectly aligned with the bluest section of the sky. I'll take it and be happy.
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