If
you are at all serious about your craft, you will have found out very early on
in your journey that photography is very hard work. Another of the many lessons
that I have learnt is to remain busy at photography, no matter what current circumstances
or challenges confront you. For me, energy-sapping and zeal-enervating
conditions include a lengthy lack of opportunity, a location that I would not
have chosen as an ideal photographic destination (and yet find myself in for a
particular reason) and a lack of the kind of light for which I had been hoping.
Travelling
through a tiny private nature reserve (near Bela-Bela in the Limpopo Province
of South Africa) several years ago, just after sunset, I came across a young Black-shouldered
Kite perched on a spindly twig of a dead tree. Initially I drove past the bird.
I felt exasperated and tired – after all, it had been cloudy all afternoon, the
light was not ideal for a simple portrait, the bird was far away, and I wanted
to get back home... It had not turned out to be a good afternoon
photographically – very few sightings and opportunities for images – so I
reversed and attempted to create at least some kind of composition of the bird
on its perch with clouds in the background.
As
I was peering through the viewfinder, concentrating on the moving clouds behind
the bird, a dark, out-of-focus entity suddenly appeared in the frame. Instead
of looking up in surprise to see what this object could possibly be, I kept on
looking through the camera. A second Kite came hurtling at speed towards the
first bird. The pictures tell the story of what happened next.
Although
Black-shouldered Kites are highly nomadic over much of their range, they are
nevertheless fiercely territorial over their present patch, especially so
during the breeding season when the lives of the pair become more settled.
While fledglings do accompany and are cared for by their father for the first
three months or so of their lives, their formerly caring father will turn into
a mean opponent once the littlies have been taught and have mastered all the
skills they need to survive. A territory-holding kite simply does not tolerate
the intrusion of any older bird into its neighbourhood, whether it is related to
the territory-owner or not.
Had
I not disciplined myself to carry on working and had I taken my eye away from
the viewfinder because a strange item had appeared there, I would have missed
the opportunity to capture this sequence of images.
The
lesson: keep on shooting, no matter what the conditions, no matter what your
mood, your energy levels are. Photography is for workaholics.
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