Crane Season
Every year the sandhill cranes arrive on their annual migration from the southern U.S. and Mexico to the northern tiers of Canada and Alaska. And every year I trudge out to find out if I’m any sort of wildlife photographer. Turns out I’m not.
It’s not that I can’t get a good shot of cranes. But the most interesting pictures are when they’re on the roost in the middle of the Platte River. I’ve only ever awoken at 4 a.m. to crawl into a blind once. I took some decent photographs, but nothing that really stands out as something interesting and different. So most years I drive around trying to photograph them while the feed in the area fields, mostly amidst the corn stalk stubble, where they forrage for leftover corn from the previous year’s harvest. And I get acceptable shots.
For this one picture I was able to drive up on the shoulder of the road to where the cranes were pretty close, seeing as I was carrying a 400mm lens with a doubler. The lines of the field created nice backdrop and the crane in the middle kept looking up while walking away from me with his buddies. Not too bad, but it doesn’t match the work done by Michael Forsberg or my friend Rick Rasmussen.
Maggie Fields
After the basketball tournament I came back to my first assignment: photograph Maggie Fields using an eye tracking system to communicate. The day was pretty open so I was able to spend more than two hours with the precocious youngster during speech, occupational, and physical therapy. She has an infectious personality, great big smile and brigth blue eyes. You can’t visit her without smiling.
Maggie, 4, choked on a bug when she was eight months old, cutting off oxygen to her brain. The result was various therapies to help her re-learn everything. But communication was tough. Last September Maggie started using the DynaVox Vmax with EyeMax system. The system has a camera that tracks her eye movement. When she holds her gaze over an icon it speaks the word for her. As Mark Coddington said in the story: “It’s opened up a whole new world of communication and personality that even her family members had never seen — all through those huge, bright blue eyes.”
Off the court
Last Thursday, Friday and Saturday I shot the Nebraska state basketball tournament. We had nine teams qualify for the tournament with three advancing to the semifinals, which then advanced to the finals. The first day is always hectic. I shot in two games at one venue, then off to another venue only to leave early for the next game at another site, and finally back to the first site for two more games. I was running around so much, just getting good images can be a challenge.
By Saturday though the pace has slowed and I had time to find and make images that I’d like to see in print. These two came from before the Ravenna Class C2 championship game and the Hampton Class D2 game. Both coaches were terrific in letting me hang out with the team while they waited for their chance to take the floor for their big game.
Waiting for them has to be somewhat like me shooting my first Husker game of the year. You know you’re ready, but the nerves and anxiety build up. Once the game starts though it all melts away and you know you are in your element.
In the end Hampton fell and Ravenna won, and while winning is great it’s also about getting there and leaving it all on the court (to use a cliche).
Back in the day: 1999
I recently discovered that some of my optical backups (CDs and DVDs) are dying. Some files are getting corrupted and its imperative that I save the past, so to speak. After working from my duplicate backups I’ve been perusing some of these treasures. What I’m learning is that I’ve come a long way from where I was back in 1999. Many images and portraits I look back on and am amazed they were published. Of course I need to cut myself some slack because this is veteran me looking back on rookie me. I’m sure Kobe Bryant looks back at tapes from his past and has a similar experience.
This image though caught my eye. It was the second deployment I covered in 1999. This was a group of Michigan C-17s that were being sent overseas. I’m not sure where they were headed. I’m guessing at Bosnia. This mother and child though stopped me as I was flipping through the pictures. Their names are lost to me, they aren’t in the IPTC, but the looks on their faces tell the story to me. In the years since I’ve covered more returning soldiers, and soldiers funerals than deployments. And I hope to cover fewer of all three in the next ten years or so.
