A Photographic Story

Last time I talked about the story that I photo can tell on its' own, but sometimes a photo is used in conjunction with words to tell a story. Why does that matter? There are times when the viewer will never have the whole story just by looking at the photo, no matter what you do. Over the last few years I have seen a lot of extremely good, eye catching photos, but that is all there is to those photos. They look sharp, and are pleasing to the eye, but there is no long lasting story to go along with the photo.

Hungry Ducklings

What story does this image tell? At first the story doesn't seem to leap out at you, or does it? Sometimes the title you give your image says more about it than you think. Consider the title of the image to be part of the story, but remember if the viewer cannot understand why it is called that within a few seconds of  viewing the image, the meaning it lost.
In some ways there are two stories to today's photo, first and foremost the story of this brood of ducklings and that they are eating bird seed tossed on the ground by some of the people walking on the trail. The second part of the story is the events that led me to arrive at this spot, just as the ducklings where there to fill their hungry little bellies.

As for my story in this, I was on my way back to my car after a wet two hour walk around the George C Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary, when I came across these ducklings, that I was not even going to photograph at first. The muddy ground, with the seed is what got my attention, normally the seed doesn't standout very well, but on the wet ground it caught my eye. Secondly the ducklings were chowing down, but they were also getting muddy. That is not something I normally see, since I often avoid shooting on days where there is heavy misting rain. The problem with rain like that is that it gets into everything, such as my shoes, which were wet by this time. I didn't mind that so much, as the concern I had that moisture would get into my gear. I'd hate to find out that some moisture got in my lens, which would lead to the growth of fungus.

I was amused to see a few people walking around in the rain with their Canon Rebel cameras with kit lenses. Now that in itself may not seem to be an issue, but walking around in the rain with an entry level DSLR isn't the brightest idea. The people acted as if it didn't matter that there little plastic fantastic cameras were wet. Do those people realize those little plastic cameras have no moisture seals? I'm guessing not. I guess they will find out really quickly if any water gets inside the electronics of the camera body or lens.