A couple of days ago, I was a little wetlands area a few miles from my home, walking the same little path that I caught the female snapper that I posted in May. That was May. This is July and that little path has now completely grown in, but it still is one of the few ways into the marsh without using a machete (which the DNR would frown upon). Aside from this little trail, there is an inpenetrable thicket of bushes, etc. around the marsh. The grass and reeds are well over seven feet tall. You kind of just have to push and feel your way forward, remembering from the past which way it goes. Anyway, my feet got all tangled up in some vines and I began to fall. I always walk with my camera out and my hand upon it, so as I fell I kept my one hand upon the camera to protect it and the other clasping my bag, to buffer it from the fall. As I fell, face first through the weeds, for some reason, my mouth was open and I caught some kind of bug or bee in the mouth and it promptly stung or bit me, generally causing considerable pain to the tip of my tongue.
I lay there for a moment or two, body and equipment both intact, just thinking about some of the things I've gone through to try and get a picture. This little misadventure didn't even result in any shots taken, let alone one that might be salable.
Last summer, I set out on a quest for garden spider shots. I remembered these fellows from my youth, but really didn't know where to find any currently. I did remember that August seemed to be the month for those big spiders and that's when I went hunting for them.
I go to a couple of little DNR lakes in southern Michigan. The Michigan DNR owns all the land around these little lakes. They're not big, maybe 50-100 acres in size. The land around them is very rugged, not mountainous or anything like that, but just swampy and horrible thickets of stickery plants every where. The one lake I've been trying to find a way around for two years and I've been stumped at every turn.
Anyway, that's where I went on my quest for for the golden garden spiders. I started in a new attack, to go around this little lake and got into this terrible little quagmire. It looked like a nice walking ground of maybe 10 acres, but turned out to be just pitfalls of sturdy looking vegetation overlaying deep muck. Did I mention the day was in the mid-ninties with awful humidity. I had almost gotten across this little area, when I was stymied by a broad band of impassable muck. Everytime I tried to find a way to cross this little patch, I would step on what I thought was solid ground and sink hip deep into this wretched stinking stuff.
OK, I'm 51 years old and in pretty good shape, but I really began to start fearing having some kind of heart attack or heat stroke or something and decided to get out of that place, so I just gave up and started back. Please I'm not exaggerating any of this, but I was struggling to get out of there. I kept sinking in this stuff and the only trees or bushes to grab onto were nasty little poison sumac trees. It was not a fun place at all. I was just about back to where I entered this little 10 acres of hell, when my eye came upon an anchor line of a big spider web. I was catching my breath for a moment and not even caring about my original intent anymore, but followed the web and there in the center was my golden garden spider.
After I had recovered a bit, I did a little more exploring and found another one just a few yards from the first. This ones web was better situated and I ended up taking a lot of shots of her. I've got one shot in my portfolio here at NPN. I just love that picture. It may not be anything to anyone else, but for me anyway, it is the equivalent of a maybe 10 point buck or something similar.
Anyone else have stories about shots that they've taken? I'd sure like to hear from you and I think others would to.
wow Dave, glad you got out ok... gads... no fun, but just viewed your spider & wow again but can see why the end was forsure a 10 point buck... what a beautiful spider... the colors & pattern are wonderful...
thank you for sharing your story...
Great story Dave - I had to read it out loud to my husband because he kept asking what I was laughing about. (I had a humorous visual of you face-planting in the reeds & so sorry that you got stung but the visual made me laugh out loud, albeit an empathetic laugh, I could imagine myself doing the same thing to protect my camera & sacrifice my body )
I too like to write stories about interesting shots & how I came about getting them. I have a monthly newsletter to go with my photo gallery that usually features a story about getting a photo, though your photo was a lot more effort than most of mine! Looks like it was worth it though! Great spider shots!!
Great story Dave. Glad to see you at least ended up with a quality image. I used to take some unnecessary chances to get in positions for unique landscape images but I avoid that these days. Worst I have had is a very bad case of chiggers..I would much rather deal with poison ivy, oak, or sumac than.
My story isn't as traumatic as the others but it was serendipitous. My wife and I went to Yellowstone four years ago and had a great trip. We were able to explore the entire park over a ten day period. The only place we hadn't toured was the road along the Madison River, which we had avoided because of construction. On our last day in the park we were in the geyser basin mid-afternoon and decided to go ahead and drive up the river.
A couple of miles down the road we saw a trumpeter swan in the river and I got a few shots of him. As we drove on with trees between us and the river on our right we spotted a large bird flying parallel to us over the river. It seemed to have a white head but we thought it was probably an osprey as we had seen lots of them but no eagles. I saw the bird flare so we stopped and I made my way down to the riverbank. Sitting on a rock in mid-stream was this guy. I was pretty excited but he was still pretty far away. I was shooting film and had a 300 f2.8 with a 2X but he was still fairly small in the frame. I took some record shots and was happy to have had the experience. After a few minutes he took off down the river but instead of disappearing he flew up into this old tree and just hung out for awhile. He was on the other side of the river but I was able to get considerably closer than I had been.
Things got a bit more interesting when a couple of crows started harassing the eagle. He seemed more annoyed than perturbed but I could tell that he was going to fly off pretty soon. I wanted to get some flight shots so I got the rig all set up and waited. Then I noticed I only had three shots left on the roll! My other body was in the car so I had to decide to hope for the best with the three shots or put in a new roll. I knew that as soon as I rewound the film he would take off and I would miss the opportunity before I could get reloaded. I decided to shoot what I had. Sure enough, about ten seconds later he bid the crows adieu and lifted off. Click, click, click, whirrrr.
Of course with film you never know what you have untill it comes back from the lab so I packed up and hoped for the best. The avian guys would not consider this a top flight shot but I was very pleased when this came back. I have a slide show that I put on at church functions celebrating the wonders of God's creation. It is set to music and one of the phrases says, "see an eagle soaring in the sky." It was the only phrase that I lacked an image for. So everytime I look at this shot I thank the Lord for giving it to me on the last day, the last road and the last frame of a wonderful trip. >=))>
Posted by David Stokely on July 12, 2006 at 12:31 PM
I've got several stories. I'll give you another one.
It was late in May of last year. I knew that deer in our area usually mated in November and dropped their fawns in May, so I had been keeping my eyes open for newborn fawn all month. It was Memorial day weekend and I went to my favorite wetland area for an afternoon of picture taking. As I started out into the field, I prayed for God to show me His wonders.
I had a wonderful afternoon. The weather was perfect, a nice sunny day, not too hot. It was just a wonderful day to be outside. I went to a boggy area that in full season would be filled with very tall grass, maybe 7-8 feet, but at this time of the year was still partially open. This little boggy meadow had little trails through the 5-6 foot tall grass. I found a box turtle feeding at the base on one of these grass clumps, so I lay down on my belly and started taking shots of him. As I lay there, I noticed just how soft and cushy last years dried grass was. It was dry and very comfortable to lay on. I thought to myself just how perfect a place this would be for a doe to have her babies on. It had plenty of cover and like I said it was a wonderful surface. I would have had no problem at all taking a nap right there.
Anyway, I got up and only walked maybe 5 or 10 feet from the box turtle, when I kicked up a doe. She was about 10-15 yards ahead of me. She ran maybe 50 yards and then she stopped and turned and just stood there staring at me. I knew. I knew. I knew, that she had a fawn there. There is no other explanation why she would stop and look back.
I walked to where she kicked up from and sure enough there they were, two wonderful precious fawns. They could not walk and the one was still somewhat wet from the birth. It was like magic. . . I was weeping and praying. It was just a precious precious moment. I only stayed there for maybe 5 minutes or so, maybe 10 at the most. I knew I needed to get out of there. These little fella's needed their Mom and I was surely an intruder. It was just an amazing afternoon. . . . Thank you Lord.
The fawn picture in my NPN portfolio is one of the fawns from that afternoon.
Discussion
5 repliesI lay there for a moment or two, body and equipment both intact, just thinking about some of the things I've gone through to try and get a picture. This little misadventure didn't even result in any shots taken, let alone one that might be salable.
Last summer, I set out on a quest for garden spider shots. I remembered these fellows from my youth, but really didn't know where to find any currently. I did remember that August seemed to be the month for those big spiders and that's when I went hunting for them.
I go to a couple of little DNR lakes in southern Michigan. The Michigan DNR owns all the land around these little lakes. They're not big, maybe 50-100 acres in size. The land around them is very rugged, not mountainous or anything like that, but just swampy and horrible thickets of stickery plants every where. The one lake I've been trying to find a way around for two years and I've been stumped at every turn.
Anyway, that's where I went on my quest for for the golden garden spiders. I started in a new attack, to go around this little lake and got into this terrible little quagmire. It looked like a nice walking ground of maybe 10 acres, but turned out to be just pitfalls of sturdy looking vegetation overlaying deep muck. Did I mention the day was in the mid-ninties with awful humidity. I had almost gotten across this little area, when I was stymied by a broad band of impassable muck. Everytime I tried to find a way to cross this little patch, I would step on what I thought was solid ground and sink hip deep into this wretched stinking stuff.
OK, I'm 51 years old and in pretty good shape, but I really began to start fearing having some kind of heart attack or heat stroke or something and decided to get out of that place, so I just gave up and started back. Please I'm not exaggerating any of this, but I was struggling to get out of there. I kept sinking in this stuff and the only trees or bushes to grab onto were nasty little poison sumac trees. It was not a fun place at all. I was just about back to where I entered this little 10 acres of hell, when my eye came upon an anchor line of a big spider web. I was catching my breath for a moment and not even caring about my original intent anymore, but followed the web and there in the center was my golden garden spider.
After I had recovered a bit, I did a little more exploring and found another one just a few yards from the first. This ones web was better situated and I ended up taking a lot of shots of her. I've got one shot in my portfolio here at NPN. I just love that picture. It may not be anything to anyone else, but for me anyway, it is the equivalent of a maybe 10 point buck or something similar.
Anyone else have stories about shots that they've taken? I'd sure like to hear from you and I think others would to.
thank you for sharing your story...
Jill :)
I too like to write stories about interesting shots & how I came about getting them. I have a monthly newsletter to go with my photo gallery that usually features a story about getting a photo, though your photo was a lot more effort than most of mine! Looks like it was worth it though! Great spider shots!!
A couple of miles down the road we saw a trumpeter swan in the river and I got a few shots of him. As we drove on with trees between us and the river on our right we spotted a large bird flying parallel to us over the river. It seemed to have a white head but we thought it was probably an osprey as we had seen lots of them but no eagles. I saw the bird flare so we stopped and I made my way down to the riverbank. Sitting on a rock in mid-stream was this guy. I was pretty excited but he was still pretty far away. I was shooting film and had a 300 f2.8 with a 2X but he was still fairly small in the frame. I took some record shots and was happy to have had the experience. After a few minutes he took off down the river but instead of disappearing he flew up into this old tree and just hung out for awhile. He was on the other side of the river but I was able to get considerably closer than I had been.
Things got a bit more interesting when a couple of crows started harassing the eagle. He seemed more annoyed than perturbed but I could tell that he was going to fly off pretty soon. I wanted to get some flight shots so I got the rig all set up and waited. Then I noticed I only had three shots left on the roll! My other body was in the car so I had to decide to hope for the best with the three shots or put in a new roll. I knew that as soon as I rewound the film he would take off and I would miss the opportunity before I could get reloaded. I decided to shoot what I had. Sure enough, about ten seconds later he bid the crows adieu and lifted off. Click, click, click, whirrrr.
Of course with film you never know what you have untill it comes back from the lab so I packed up and hoped for the best. The avian guys would not consider this a top flight shot but I was very pleased when this came back. I have a slide show that I put on at church functions celebrating the wonders of God's creation. It is set to music and one of the phrases says, "see an eagle soaring in the sky." It was the only phrase that I lacked an image for. So everytime I look at this shot I thank the Lord for giving it to me on the last day, the last road and the last frame of a wonderful trip. >=))>
It was late in May of last year. I knew that deer in our area usually mated in November and dropped their fawns in May, so I had been keeping my eyes open for newborn fawn all month. It was Memorial day weekend and I went to my favorite wetland area for an afternoon of picture taking. As I started out into the field, I prayed for God to show me His wonders.
I had a wonderful afternoon. The weather was perfect, a nice sunny day, not too hot. It was just a wonderful day to be outside. I went to a boggy area that in full season would be filled with very tall grass, maybe 7-8 feet, but at this time of the year was still partially open. This little boggy meadow had little trails through the 5-6 foot tall grass. I found a box turtle feeding at the base on one of these grass clumps, so I lay down on my belly and started taking shots of him. As I lay there, I noticed just how soft and cushy last years dried grass was. It was dry and very comfortable to lay on. I thought to myself just how perfect a place this would be for a doe to have her babies on. It had plenty of cover and like I said it was a wonderful surface. I would have had no problem at all taking a nap right there.
Anyway, I got up and only walked maybe 5 or 10 feet from the box turtle, when I kicked up a doe. She was about 10-15 yards ahead of me. She ran maybe 50 yards and then she stopped and turned and just stood there staring at me. I knew. I knew. I knew, that she had a fawn there. There is no other explanation why she would stop and look back.
I walked to where she kicked up from and sure enough there they were, two wonderful precious fawns. They could not walk and the one was still somewhat wet from the birth. It was like magic. . . I was weeping and praying. It was just a precious precious moment. I only stayed there for maybe 5 minutes or so, maybe 10 at the most. I knew I needed to get out of there. These little fella's needed their Mom and I was surely an intruder. It was just an amazing afternoon. . . . Thank you Lord.
The fawn picture in my NPN portfolio is one of the fawns from that afternoon.