In Need of an Adventure

I'm in desperate need of some kind of adventure.  Been way too long since I was able to get out and face some kind of outdoor challenge.  Other than an occasional day outing or maybe hiking across Oklahoma's Tallgrass Prairie on a photo safari, the last real adventure of any length I had was a multi day float / camp / fishing trip down Arkansas's Buffalo River about three years ago.  I love that place.  It's one of the few places in that area where you can experience a near wilderness adventure...at least for a few days anyway.

Arkansas's Buffalo River is one of the few rivers that remains intact from its source, the Boston Mountains in the Ozarks, to its end, the White River toward the north central part of the state.  Over one hundred and fifty miles of scenic splendor like 500 foot bluffs, clear water, magnificent night skies, wildlife, and heavily wooded Ozark country side   On the upper end you'll encounter faster moving currents and some pretty good rapids along the way especially if the river is running at optimal levels.  Over the course of its length, the river's personality changes and the current further down is characterized by slower moving currents and longer pools.

The fishing is usually pretty good with lots of smallmouth bass, Kentucky bass, and assorted other creek related swimming critters.  The closer you get to the White River, you might even tie into a rainbow trout as the White is one of the best trout fisheries in the country and they tend to migrate a few miles up the Buffalo.

Over the years, some of my hunting and fishing buddies and I have made numerous trips down the Buffalo.  We pack all our gear into our canoes...spot a vehicle at the takeout...and shove off.  Most of our trips run about three days or so, but we've made trips up to five days on the river.  It's a great adventure.

Sometimes the weather doesn't co-operate and we've been caught several times on the river during an Ozark thunderstorm and downpour.  Sure makes for an interesting adventure when that happens.  I've rarely been able to capture the Buffalo photographically at least in the way I know is possible.  Mostly because of time and weather not always coordinating with each other.  But, I never fail to at least make the attempt for there is no shortage of opportunity...it's just a matter of combining the opportunity with the right kind of light.

One of my favorite places on the river is the area called Skull Bluff.  Actually its an area that extends several miles upriver from Woolum, to Skull Bluff, to the Nar's.  The Nar's is a unique geological formation where two separate river systems, Richland Creek and the Buffalo, have eroded both sides of a ridge to where a narrow slit or wall of rock maybe 150 feet high separates the two sides.  If you're brave enough, you can climb up the ridge from down stream and work your way over to the narrow wall and walk out on to it.  I've done it a time or two, but will probably never do it again as I'm not as brave as I was in my younger years...or maybe I've gotten a bit wiser...in either case...I've had thrill enough of standing on that four foot wide ledge and seeing nothing but air straight to the bottom broken by a few tree limbs.  I did catch the largest smallmouth I've ever caught at the base of the Nar's.  A nice, deep, pool swirls around where the rock wall climbs skyward from the water, and grandaddy smallmouth bass tend to prowl around in its depths.

Of the friends I've floated the Buffalo with, two of them are gone now.  Although they are no longer able to make those floats, the memories of the times we had still pleasantly linger.  Those stories are told over and over again when the rest of us do manage to regroup, and share a few days of adventure...I think I'll give them a call soon and see what kind of adventure we can conjure up...like I said...It's been way to long.

(Would love hear about your adventures...)

Keith Bridgman

Hunting with a Camera

Over the years I've spent a great many hours in the field hunting...deer, quail, ducks & geese, squirrel among others.  As I have grown older, I still do some of the traditional type of hunting, but more often than not I hunt with a camera.  The challenge to photograph wildlife is basically the same as the techniques required to do the other kind of hunting. I discovered early on that doing so can be very difficult as the lighting conditions are usually not in your favor for such endeavors, and the wildlife rarely cooperates.  Regardless, I've found it to be quite rewarding and fun.

On one arm of Barren River Lake not far from home, I discovered a few years ago that Kentucky has a good population of Greater Sandhill Cranes that migrate through and even winter over.  They are an ancient bird standing almost four feet tall with a wingspan of almost 6 feet.  They migrate from southern Canada and the northern United States by the thousands through Kentucky. Their cousins the Lesser Sandhill Cranes, migrate across the central plains states from areas a bit further north along the Artic circle.

The Greater Sandhill species were almost hunted into extinction by the early part of the 20th century and were down to only about 25 or 30 mating pairs at one time.  With protection and migratory bird treaties their numbers have rebounded to around 40,000.  The Lesser Sandhills number into the hundreds of thousands.

They are a difficult bird to photograph as they are extremely wary and have excellent eyesight.  The middle of December will find me donning full camo and heading out to find the birds as they work the cornfields in and around the lake area.  They tend to like using the same locations and will fly in and out during the course of the day.  If you can catch them  early or late when a large group of them are flying in, then your odds of getting some good photographs improve.

What I normally do is find a field I know they like to use, and then station myself along a fence row or tree line, hide amongst the cover, and wait for them to start coming in.  Sometimes I wait in vain, but usually I will be rewarded for my efforts.  I use a 50-500 mm zoom lens as you need a lot of reach.  It's great fun to observe them by the thousands circle and settle into a field.  Their chattel like honking is very distinctive and sounds nothing like anything else in the wild.

Hunting with a camera can provide much of the same kind of rewards that traditional hunting offers.  Both activities require stealth, perseverance, a knowledge of the natural history and tendencies of your target, and a lot of luck.

Keith Bridgman

Simplicity of Purpose

A few years ago I drove to a location a few miles from home hoping to catch one of those fabulous Kentucky sunsets.  At that time I was still shooting film...which by the way is a great learning tool when it comes to photography...so I was in the mode of thinking through every shot for fear of wasting valuable field time and expensive processing costs.  One thing I noticed back then was that many of my photographs all looked the same...there just wasn't enough variation in them to generate much interest.  Over time I began to more seriously evaluate what I was doing and why I just wasn't capturing the photo's I knew were possible.

I studied other photographers work and compared them to mine.  What I noticed was simply quite revealing, in fact, simplicity was one of the major elements that separated the 'professional' images from my snapshots.  Simplicity of Purpose as it pertains to photography means that everything seen in the photograph should be there for a reason.  Nothing should be in the image that detracts from the story you are trying to show or tell. It doesn't mean that the image lacks for complex details, just that all the details that are there contribute to the image story. When I began to evaluate my images, I realized I was ignoring the context of simplicity in my compositions.

An artists begins with a blank canvas and adds the elements that eventually becomes a work of art.  A photographer on the other hand, begins with a full canvas, and must through effective use of composition and light, remove all the elements that don't belong.  It may require a different lens, or different position or perspective.  It may require that you change the angle or orientation of the camera.  It certainly requires that you have a command of how the camera see's light and how the exposure process works...even with the auto exposure capabilities built into cameras now a days.

On that day I was reaching the end of my last roll of slide film and only had one exposure left.  I didn't feel all that confident that I had captured anything of quality, but as the sun lowered to just above the shallow hill to my west, I noticed there was this one single Queen Ann's Lace standing just inside the fence line.  The sun was a great ball of orange, so I thought I'd try to place that wildflower between me and the sun and see what would happen.  It was a difficult shot for several reasons...one of which was because I couldn't get into the position I needed and had to bend low under the barbed wire and lean way out.  With it being my last shot on that roll, I also had to think about what the brightness of the sun would do to the exposure...and compensated a full stop higher than what the meter reading wanted to use.

When I had the slides developed, as I was afraid, most of the roll just didn't work...but that one shot of the Queen Ann's Lace stood out...primarily because of its simplicity.  It is still one of my favorite images today.

Keith Bridgman