Queen of the Lake

During my stint in North Carolina, I was fortunate enough to live on a lake. This lake was beautiful! It was a secluded, private lake, and as such it had an abundance of wildlife. On this little sliver of paradise, my family and I had a routine. Every weekend we would maximize our time on the lake, Ideally strolling around saying hi to our friends and then landing at the sandbar in the center of the lake. We would usually then spend the rest of the day there enjoying the company of anyone else who came. About a quarter of a mile from the sandbar there was a huge eagle’s nest. From time to time, you would see the eagles out hunting or watching over the lake. The eagles were very vocal though and would let you know if they thought you were getting too close. To me it was like having your own TV show about eagles. We especially loved watching the parents train their young each year. At the time, I had minimal camera equipment in my arsenal. I had no lens to photograph wildlife, especially since the lens I owned was just the kit 18-55mm. The eagles persuaded me to purchase a 200-500mm because I needed something longer. On the day that I received the lens we decided that we would take a boat ride to test it out. Having done all my research about what techniques to use and what to look out for, I felt prepared. I was hyper aware of everything, not only because of the excitement of having a new lens, but also because you need to be when you are photographing animals. As we got closer to the nest with the boat, my dad turned off the engine and just let us quietly drift. After drifting for what felt like an hour but must have been 20 minutes we had to readjust the boat. A little while later, my parents called out that the eagle was flying back to its nest. I reacted quickly and locked on with my camera and tracked it in. It definitely looked like I had experience (but I didn't)! The only question I had was whether I had nailed focus because it all happened so fast. We were all so excited that we were so lucky. It's almost like we planned that. As I excitedly started reviewing the files when we got home, I was quickly humbled: I had missed focus on the first several images, not majorly but enough. I then went to the next group of photos and saw that I nailed focus, so much so that you see the fish in the beak being brought home for the babies! This taught me that you can plan and plan all you want, but it's more important to just get out and shoot or else you will never get the perfect shot.