Spending Time with a Friend

As I mentioned in my previous post, I am trying to catch up with my posts from the past few years. I want to go back to February of 2023 when my good friend Ben Greenberg came for a visit. We had two days of great shooting time.

Ben had indicated he wanted to photograph Sandhill Cranes while here. Unfortunately, it had warmed up and most the cranes in Jackson County had flown north. After some research, I found that there were still a few cranes at Goose Pond. We checked at the visitor’s center and were told of a general area northeast of Goose Pond where some cranes were spotted that morning. It did not take long to locate several groups of about 50 cranes each that we photographed for an hour or more.

Lunch and Planning

We headed back to the visitor’s center to have lunch and search the big pools for more birds. Typically, there are a number of birds, cranes, ducks, and hawks around the center, but none today. There was a huge group of snow geese in main pond, but they were too far away from the center or the road to photograph. Most of the other ponds east of the center were void of any birds. Stopping at the visitor’s center again, we learned where a flock of white pelicans were reported. We spotted the scoop of white pelicans near the road. They were content to sit on a spot in the middle of the pond as we photographed them. Ben suggested we wait a few minutes longer to see if they would “swarm” before leaving. I mentioned that I had only seen them land and sit! We waited, and in a few minutes, they took off!

Another Day of Shooting

The next morning was heavily overcast and we did not see the sun until early afternoon. We traveled to several places nearby and our last stop was just a few miles from my home. I visit this area frequently as I have seen the plants display a multitude of colors depending on the time of year. The lighting was excellent and we had a couple of mallards to make the scene interesting. We both selected our 80-400mm lens to photograph the scene.

Critic

The next day, Ben offered to critic the photos I have hanging in our home and then we spent more time critiquing selected photos on my computer. He gave me lots of useful information on how to improve my photos and processing. His favorite line is, “I’ve never seen a photo that cannot be improved!” Needless to say, I have lots of work to finish. The following photo is one Ben liked and took minimal work other than changing the cropping to a 4×5 format to make it more a square format.