At Middle Creek, timing and distance shape a photo of migrating geese

MIDDLE CREEK, Pennsylvania (AP) — Robert F. Bukaty has been a staff photographer for the Associated Press for more than 30 years. Here’s what he had to say about this extraordinary photo.

Why this photo?

My assignment was to illustrate a story about the huge number of migrating snow geese that make a stopover at the Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area in rural Pennsylvania. Each spring as many as 100,000 geese overnight on the open water of a still-partially frozen manmade reservoir during their northbound journey from the Chesapeake Bay to their breeding grounds on the Arctic tundra.

Two colleagues who had visited the refuge the previous week gave me the lowdown on what to expect: Get there well before dawn because the parking lot fills up early. Then walk the half-mile trail to Willow Point and get ready for thousands of geese to become increasingly noisier until they suddenly take flight en masse around sunrise.

Before I set off to photograph a feature story I try to research my subject. Then I spend some time thinking about what photo gear to bring and what preparations I need to make for the weather. The one thing I try not to do is to come up with any preconceived ideas for specific pictures, with the hopes of going in with an open mind.

That, however, was not the case with this story. And that is why I almost blew it.

Before I arrived at Middle Creek I visualized almost this exact picture. But when I tried to make it, I discovered the birds were at least 100 yards from shore. When they took off, they certainly created an impressive spectacle – but they were just too far away, even for my 400mm lens equipped with a 2x extender.

I tried again the next morning. Same thing. Too far away. That’s when I remembered reading that the birds were not always in a hurry to get up to the frozen tundra. They often spent the day feeding in the nearby corn fields.

Late in the afternoon, not far from the reservoir, I drove onto a dirt road and soon came across a couple dozen birders standing outside their parked cars. Out on the muddy farm field were several thousand geese. The closest ones were only about 40 yards away!

How I made this photo

I grabbed the 400 with the 2X and waited for blast off. I set my camera’s shutter at 1/125th of a second: fast enough to freeze the action while panning with the birds, but slow enough, hopefully, to convey a little bit of the frantic energy of their flapping wings.

Why this photo works

I think this picture works because the compressed perspective of the telephoto lens shows the density of the huge flock, while at least one bird in peak action is clearly visible for the viewer to focus on.

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