Mike Powell

How do you capture the mood of the moment? I really love the early morning, those moments when the wildlife is just waking up and becoming active and the sun is slowly rising. This winter, though, I have been kind of lazy and a little unmotivated. Consequently I have been generally sleeping through those magical moments or been seated in front of my computer rather than standing outdoors behind my camera.

Recently, though, I visited Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge just after dawn and captured these images, which give you a sense of what I was seeing and feeling on that occasion. In the first image a pair of Bufflehead ducks (Bucephala albeola) were flying past another duck in the foreground. As your eyes make your way across the color-tinged ripples towards the distant horizon, you can just make out successive rows of other water birds.

In the second image, a solitary Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) was already at work just off the shore, fishing for breakfast. Though the heron is almost a silhouette, you can just detect the warm sunshine coming from the right that illuminates its chest.

The light is the main subject in the final, almost abstract image. The light reveals the details in the grain of the wood and creates a wonderfully distorted reflection in the ripples of the water. In many ways this image represents photography reduced to its simplest, most elemental form—the interplay of light and shadows.

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.