Making pictures sometimes involves the experience of flow. Flow photography has different streams: practice, a balanced level of difficulty, and a somewhat mysterious emotional aspect. We call this third part the “state of the heart.” It is the sensing part that lets us perceive differently when we’re being still, letting go, and allowing nature to move within her own rhythm.
“What is true is invisible to the eye.
It is only with the heart that one can see clearly.”
~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery
It is February 29th at about 7 am, 2016 on Florida’s West coast. Small waves from passing fishing trawlers lap against the sides of my dinghy, after I rowed it to a mangrove island to see the birds and absorb their dawn chorus.
( Above, in this Jimages short film, a Great Blue Heron tries repeatedly to spear a fish, and finally snares it. Great blue herons can find food miles away from their nest.)
Being in Flow
Now, at 8 am, I am just about to row away and stop photographing, but pause, and change my mind. I consider this feeling…it is a sense of rightness, and being in flow.
Although it has been a challenge to shoot from my rowboat from underneath aromatic, bird-spackled mangroves, I’ve felt that “aha” feeling that photographers get, from more than one of the frames so far.
Just then, something moves atop the mangroves–it’s a great blue heron. He is flying away from the female and their nest area.
What if he returns?
As part of their courtship, a male great blue heron brings a branch to his mate, with a lot of display and shrieking. They mate for a season, but each bird may find a new mate the following season. (Nikon D810, 360 mm, f7.1)
Listening to the cries from the rookery I feel my heart beating. A cloud floats off the sun. The heron flies in from the East, and this picture happened.
Letting Go the Oars
The picture came as I let go. I let go the oars and slowly surrendered to just being. My heart beat slowly. I trusted the row boat and the birds to hover over the water. This beautiful bird flew in gracefully, like a shallow wave on a beach and after making four frames, there was my friend Flow.
Sensing and Seeing
Rowing home, I thought of a phrase I’d copied in my notebook, from master spiritual photographer Paul Caponigro (born 1932):
“Mysteriously, and most often when I was not conscious of control, that magical and subtle force crept somehow into the image, offering back what I sense as well as what I saw” (Chapter in Landscapes of the Spirit, by William Neill).
Bottom Line: Sensing nature’s spirit by photographing her birds is a state of the heart. Let it beat.
More heron and egrets from other times with these birds:
At the edge of a wave, a great blue heron leaps off the beach to take flight. During breeding, the Great Blue Heron’s lower legs change from yellow to orange. (Canon 7D, 400 EOS L f5/6)A reddish egret (egretta rufescens) in the Bahamas. That joint in the middle, which we call the “knee”, is actually the ankle. The heron’s true knee is often hidden by the feathers on it belly, because the heron is holding its thigh bone horizontally against its body (as shown in pink below). So even though herons look statuesque and upright when standing on the ground, they’re actually crouching, as is every other living bird. (Canon 7D, 400 mm).In the Bahamas, a juvenile black crowned night heron carries a turban snail. These herons are generalist predators can dine on crustaceans. (Canon 7D, 400 mm).
