Nature comes to play in snow

My previous post involved wintery landscapes around my home. It was bitter cold and still snowing that day so I could only choose one camera from my arsenal. For afterall, when you are recording history such as the most beautiful snow fall your area had ever seen, you’ve gotta make it count! The next day the sun came out allowing me a brief time to reflect.

How can I be true to myself, the nature photographer, without walking out in the field to actually observe nature? Problem is, you never know if nature will agree in kind. One moment you can see tons of birds out and about and of course you don’t have your camera on hand, followed by the very next moment when you run out and grab that camera only to see that all of the birds have left. I decided to risk it. Failure is also a part of the artistic process, isn’t it?

I ventured forth, away from my comfortable warm surroundings into the frozen chaotic wilderness known as my front yard. Snow was melting at a record pace as if the weather had executed its grand plan of revenge only to be met by a more fierce foe – normalcy. You have to walk at least a mile out in my neighborhood of Haslet before you get to the vast open expanse. A local rancher, of whom my housing development borders, is embroiled in a bitter feud between a very large railroad company whose name shall remain anonymous. I’m the selfish winner out of all of this. The railroad company is not able to purchase the land, and large swath of Texas prairie remains intact. This means I get to see hawks, sparrows, and meadowlarks if I am lucky.

Yea, I say I was lucky today. All of my favorite birds were out enjoying the snow. Surely there was nothing new brought about by the snow, but the birds seemed to appreciate the ground plane for a change making it ideal for some picturesque Texas photography!

For those of you unaware of my photography ethics, I am a NANPA member, meaning that when I am out in the field documenting the nature around me there is a code that I follow. I try to never approach my subject matter and spook it. Believe me, tenured NANPA photographers can discern a stressed bird in a photograph and one not so stressed. It’s a difficult process and expensive, because you have to have a lens with reach so nature can continue doing its thing. Not many understand it. But for me it’s a gratifying to experience the nature around me in my own home town and be able to document the moment as it happens. My area is truly something unique.