Yesterday afternoon I packed up a long lens with a Nikon d850 body to head out to Delaware Bay marshes in search of critters of any sort, but ducks, geese and wading birds were the more likely target I thought. I threw my Z7 with its 24-70 lens in my bag at the last moment ‘just in case’. I’m using my Z7 pretty regularly now for landscape photography and I love it. My older Nikon 80-400 doesn’t link with my Z7 autofocus so two camera setups work for me for versatility. I got skunked in my search for wildlife in good light. High cirrus clouds screened the sun late day and little to no wildlife was seen in the windy open water of the marshes. I did come upon an interesting scene on Fowler Beach Road along the marsh section of that road. Along that stretch of roadway there were dozens of people with spotting scopes and long lensed cameras all trained on a section of marsh north of the road. Seeing nothing of interest myself, I asked a guy standing in the bed of his pickup truck, looking through a scope, what the attraction was. A single Northern Harrier was working the marsh, about 150 yards out from the road. The attention that single bird was getting reassured me that I wasn’t missing anything else in the area. We are desperate, it seems, for wildlife viewing subjects. So, with nothing to show for my wildlife photography quest, I watched as the cirrus clouds slid southerly in the sky so that even the promising sunset under them diminished. I returned to a spot where I could photograph open water and the last of the clouds as the sun set in open sky to the right of them. The teaching moment in this is to continue to look for beauty to photograph even when your primary vision falls flat. Nature abounds, find it. This shot was taken with my Z7, my almost afterthought.
Serendipity Sunset
January 10, 2021
