How my passion for nature photography began
/Hurricane Ivan made a direct hit on the city where we had purchased a retirement home (Pensacola, FL) in September 2004 only a few months before I retired the following January. I had envisioned spending much of my time during retirement exploring the coast of the Gulf of Mexico (and beyond) in our 32 ft. sailboat. But Ivan destroyed all the local marinas and the concomitant increases in the cost of boat insurance and marina slip fees placed the cost/enjoyment ratio of sailing as a retirement hobby at an uncomfortable level. But what would replace my passion for sailing if I sold the boat?
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One day in 2007, as my wife handed me a brochure from National Geographic advertising an expedition aboard the National Geographic Explorer to the Antarctic Peninsula, South Georgia, and the Falklands, she said “you should go on this” – not we, but you. She knew I had read extensively about the difficulty of early sailing vessels trying to make it through the Drake Passage.
And she knew that I had read and re-read accounts of Shackleton’s expedition to the Antarctic, of his ship Endurance being trapped and crushed in the ice, and how he and five members of his crew made the extraordinary voyage from Elephant Island to South Georgia in the 22.5-foot long life boat, the James Caird.
After I had signed up and was assured of a berth on the ship, I bought a Nikon D80, my first DSLR camera, a 300mm telephoto lens, and a 18-200 mm f/3.5-5.6 zoom lens. I had dabbled with photography many years earlier but knew almost nothing about digital photography. I spent the 4 months before leaving for Antarctica taking practice photos of birds, stationary and in flight, hoping that this practice would keep me from screwing up photos of the albatross, penguins and scenery.
While on the trip I realized that nature photography, especially bird photography, was an excellent retirement activity for me. It combined many things I enjoy: being outdoors, photography, birding, travelling to new places, messing about with computers, and learning new skills and concepts. And, indeed, I have spent much of my time since 2007 involved in nature photography.
Four months of practice helped, but nonetheless many of the photos taken on the National Geographic expedition were under- or over-exposed. Moreover, my post processing skills at that point in time did not do justice to the images that were properly exposed. Consequently, a high priority current project is the "restoration" of photos I took during the first few years after acquiring the Nikon D80, especially those taken on trips to Antarctica, Iceland and Newfoundland. Although I have posted, printed, and shown in slide presentations many photos taken in those early years, many more have never been fully processed. The tendency to attend to recent images allows the older ones to lie dormant. A few examples of restored or reclaimed 2007 images follow.
Blue-eyed Shag - Petermann Island, Antarctica - Feb. 21, 2007
Blue-eyed Shag - Petermann Island, Antarctica - Feb. 21, 2007
The bird is sitting on a nest near the edge of a cliff. The ocean is in the background. The nest is constructed of seaweed, feathers, driftwood, and mud.
Blue-eyed shag is a catch-all phrase used to describe 8 to 14 closely related cormorant species and subspecies found in the coldest regions of the Southern Hemisphere - from New Zealand and the southern end of South America down through the Antarctic. The birds have a blue eye ring (not a blue iris). Two species of phalacrocoraciids (shags and cormorants) are found in Antarctica. The Antarctic shag (Phalacrocorax bransfieldensis) is found in the Antarctic Peninsula. The South Georgia shag (Phalacrocorax georgianus) inhabits the South Orkney Islands and the sub-Antarctic South Sandwich Islands, South Georgia and Shag Rock.
Blue-eyed Shag - Petermann Island, Antarctica - Feb. 21, 2007
Blue-eyed Shag - Petermann Island, Antarctica - Feb. 21, 2007
I believe the beak positions in this image and the next one illustrate part of a "greeting display" that occurs after mate selection has been completed.
The maximum measured diving depth of the Antarctic shag is 112.6 m (370 feet) and the maximum measured duration of a dive is 5.35 minutes. This is the deepest and longest duration record for any flying bird in Antarctica and is comparable to measurements obtained from the small Antarctic penguins (gentoo, Adelie, and chinstrap). Casaux and Barrera-Oro. Antarctic Science 18, 3-14 (2006).
Blue-eyed Shag - Petermann Island, Antarctica - Feb. 21, 2007
Blue-eyed Shag - Petermann Island, Antarctica - Feb. 21, 2007
Blue-eyed Shag - Booth Island, Antarctica - Feb. 21, 2007
Blue-eyed Shag - Booth Island, Antarctica - Feb. 21, 2007
After spending most of the morning at Petermann Island, the zodiacs carried us back to the ship. During lunch the ship moved northwards to Booth Island. We arrived in the midst of a snow storm with winds reaching 30 knots. As was the case throughout the expedition, the weather did not prevent the crew from taking those wishing to do so to the shore during the scheduled stops.
Blue-eyed Shag - Grytviken, South Georgia - Feb. 28, 2007
South Georgia shag (Phalacrocorax georgianus) - Grytviken, South Georgia - Feb. 28, 2007
Grytviken is an abandoned whaling station founded by a Norwegian whaler and sealer, Captain Carl Anton Larsen in 1904. More than 700 whales were killed in 1905 just by hunting inside the bay where the station was located. The station continued in operation until the mid-1960s.
Grytviken, South Georgia - Feb. 28, 2007
In late 1914 Shackelton and crew sailed the Endurance into Grytviken before continuing with their plan to make the first continental crossing of Antarctic. After leaving Grytviken, they sailed south into the Weddell Sea. Endurance was caught in the ice in January 1915 and eventually crushed on 27 October. The 28 crew members managed to reach Elephant Island. Shackleton and five members of the crew sailed the small life boat, James Caird, to the southern coast of South Georgia, hiked to the northeast coast where, from Grytviken, Shackleton organized the operation that rescued the remainder of the crew.
Shackleton came back to South Georgia in 1922 with the ship, the Quest. At Grytviken he had a heart attack and died and he is buried in the cemetery there. Participants in our expedition gathered at the cemetery to toast this famous explorer.
Blue-eyed Shag - New Island, Falklands - March 6, 2007