Tuesday, May 25, 2010

So near . . . and yet so far




One of my fondest goals as a summer resident of Steve Martinez' fictional Porcupine County in Upper Michigan is to get a good photograph of the dozen or so great blue herons nesting in a remote rookery just outside Porcupine City.

The trouble is the rookery lies in the middle of an impenetrable swamp about 200 yards wide by 400 yards long. One needs a ten-thousand-dollar 1,000-millimeter telephoto lens to get a good shot -- or enough Navy SEAL training to sneak up undetected under the surface through the reeds and leeches with a shorter lens.

Both alternatives are, of course, way out of my league.

So I had to make do with a hand-me-down but very sharp 300-millimeter lens and crop the original photograph by about two-thirds to get this long view from the road just south of the rookery.

Click on the photo for a larger version. With some browsers you can click twice for an even larger closeup, and if you do you'll spot three young herons in the nest.

4 comments:

  1. great shooting... and yeah, i know - never ever enough lens when you need it... but 10k seems cheap compared to those canon lenses for my 550D that seem to start at around 14K for 600mm

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  2. Lovely photo: I do envy you having such marvellous wildlife on your doorstep.

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  3. Can't you get to it with a dinghy or something?

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  4. Approaching in a boat would spook the herons. These are wild birds, not tame aviary creatures. They are very shy.

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