Slackin’ With Herons.

OK, so I’m slackin’.

Actually, I’m buried under the job of being unemployed, and trying to get my photography act together so it provides at least a piece of my economic puzzle.

“Job counselors” are telling me that it’s a shitty time to “try to get into” photography, but my heart isn’t having any of that.  Consequently, there’s a fair amount of swimming upstream in my immediate future.  Wish me luck with that.

In the meantime, I spent the last of yesterday’s daylight hours standing veeeeeery still at the edge of a pond in Orange, MA waiting for a heron I’d seen on the drive-by to return to its nest.  The sky was densely overcast, and as sunset approached and the light grew dimmer I booted my ISO ever higher, lamenting the loss of acuity I’d certainly have to deal with in the post-processing.  But such was the price for maintaining a fast enough shutter speed to capture a bird in flight.

Just when it was getting too dark to continue the effort, the heron returned, and I got these shots:

…as well as a big fat tick deeply embedded in my groin.

Ah, the price we pay for our art.

Anyway, if I’m scarce in these parts, it’s because I’m trying, really  I am, to get my foot in the closing door of professional photography.  And being unemployed gives me both the time and the motivation to try hard.