Blackwater Wildlife Refuge: A Favorite Place To Photograph

MEG member Susan Meyers describes a place she returns to time and time again for new photographic images. 

(c) Susan Meyers

We all have our favorite places to photograph.  Some close to home and some more distant.

One of my places is just two hours from home on the Eastern Shore near Cambridge, Maryland. For me, Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge is the perfect place to indulge in two of my favorite pastimes--photography and bird watching. Together but separate.

We usually go several times a year, because Blackwater changes with the seasons. It's the one place you can always be guaranteed to see bald eagles (usually more than one).  On one visit, we actually saw over two dozen in an afternoon.  Also a great many ducks winter there and large flocks of snow geese.  There is nothing quite like a thousand snow geese coming to roost in the late afternoon sunlight, honking away, and circling until one decides to come in for a landing and the rest follow.  The sky looks like it's filled with silvery confetti.

(c) Susan Meyers

It's a wonderful place any time of the year, but I especially like it in late December, or early January, when the sun sets early, and unless we've had a particularly cold spell, there is still a lot of open water.
I've been both a photographer and a birdwatcher since I was in my early 20s, but early on I realized I didn't have the patience to be a nature photographer.  About that time, Elliot Porter published "Birds of North America."  Some of the photos are still breathtaking forty years later. He built scaffolding, lowered the tops of trees, and indulged in other drastic measures to obtain the wonderful photos in this volume.  I lacked the equipment, resources, and perseverance for this kind of photography.  You might find a great blue, or an egret in some of my pictures, but no parents feeding baby cerulean warblers at the nest.  I also have an aversion to heavy camera equipment and huge lenses.  So I leave that type of nature photography to others heartier than me.  If you are one of these people and do get the iconic eagle photo, I'd love to see it.

(c) Susan Meyers

What I do take is trees, flowers, water, reflections, and the color of light.  You can find that in abundance at Blackwater.  Every time is unique and the colors you capture are never the same twice.  Just remember, even if there aren't any clouds, don't pack up and leave as soon as the sun dips below the horizon.  Sometimes that is just the beginning.  Be patient and you may get a light show the likes of which you can't begin to imagine.