Sailing Wing-and-Wing: Adventures with Wild Birds

In Capturing Context, we share the story behind the image, providing insight into the photographer's approach and experience, and allowing the reader to connect more deeply with the work.

Sailing downwind, our jib sail was on the starboard side. Our main sail was set to port. This sail set is called "wing-and-wing." We sailed Salty Paws, a 40-foot sailing catamaran and our home for two decades, to a dock in North Carolina. From there, we planned to sail to Canada. When you live on a boat, your home remains a constant as your surroundings change. Landscapes and fauna slowly transform as you make your way, and wildlife encounters often announce your arrival at a new region. In this particular cruise, four avian moments gave glimpses into nature's beauty, and inspired a few ideas on slow photography.

We tied the boat to the dock with her bow pointed north toward shore and the stern facing the river. Ahead, off the bow, a great blue heron fished for minnows by the tall grasses. Astern, a pair of mating tree swallows swooped around the dock lines in a colorful aerial ballet. Docked between these birds, our home was like a third species, a water bird temporarily nesting, yet eager to fly northward. Wanting to be prepared to photograph nature’s moments at any time, I placed my tripod-mounted camera by the door. I was glad that I did, when one morning, after turning on the boat's solar-panel-powered electricity, and brewing coffee, I heard a raspy squawk. A flash of blue feathers landed in the reeds.

The heron stalked slowly, stopping to stare at a meal below the surface. Too fast for the eye, it struck. When it was still, the bird radiated a pulsating alertness. The heron's success, to this humble sailor, opened a window to slow photography. As photographers, our adventures are as much muscle as they are mind and eye. How we observe what is about to happen, in space and time, defines our success. Our frame sculpts space and our shutter tries to define time. Lying next to a tripod on the dock, feeling joyful in the heron's presence, the morning seemed to expand. I thought: I've got all the time in the world to make this photograph.

“Sailing in a brisk wind, feeling it rush past my face, is the closest I have been to the joy of free flight.”

The moment passed and I moved on, as the heron left and tree swallows began to zip around our boat. One nesting pair kept returning to a dock line between two pilings. I pre-focused my lens there, on a spot where I hoped they might return. The male was chirping furiously and courting the female. I waited. My adoration for these cheerful feathered acrobats fueled my hopes for a photograph of their courtship. Later, when reviewing the images that I had captured, one particular frame stood out.

This instant transpired too fast for my mind to stop the action through the viewfinder; only later did I see the frame where the male tree swallow was in this particular position. This "optical unconscious” – when we're not consciously aware of the totality within the frame – is a familiar aspect of our craft, explored by theorists and photographers for years. The tree swallow photograph reminded me of that famous quote by Antoine de St. Exupery in The Little Prince: “Here is my secret. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eyes."

“Maintaining silence and stillness, we can clear away all but our passionate heartbeat.”

Soon after my encounter with the swallows, loaded with supplies, we set sail along the US Atlantic coast towards Nova Scotia. Sailing in a brisk wind, feeling it rush past my face, is the closest I have been to the joy of free flight. Passing through the Carolinas, Chesapeake Bay, and Long Island Sound, we sailed toward Grand Manan, between Maine and Canada.

Offshore, the weather grew cold, and it rained all day. The wind blew at an uncomfortable thirty knots. Inside, the water from condensation dripped down the boat's hulls. Sailing in rain and fog for almost a week, our hopes of seeing a puffin were dampened. The puffins seemed invisible - a mythical bird. On the last morning in the area, the seas calmed and a cloudless sky turned the ocean a cobalt blue. Not a single gust riffled the water. Finally, we spotted a puffin flock at rest on the open sea. Engine off; we drifted silently toward the birds.

The flock took wing. A sole puffin remained but started to paddle away. I lay on the trampoline at the bow, with the puffin and its reflection filling the viewfinder. Avian and human eyes locked onto each other. Just before this last bird went airborne, a shutter opened and closed. With the puffin gone, we floated in stillness. Aboard our home, I have a book by photographer Minor White, who wrote about this kind of stillness. White said: "First, be still with yourself until the object of your attention affirms your presence."

White's wisdom reflects two key skills of slow photographers. The first is the quality of our attention. Stillness is the second. This puffin image only happened because we were still until our presence was acknowledged. Maintaining silence and stillness, we can clear away all but our passionate heartbeat.

Speechless, we celebrated the puffin sighting and sailed on. Leaving Grand Manan, we sailed across the Bay of Fundy and around Cape Sable. Eventually, we reached the Bras D'Or Lake area of Nova Scotia. A wild, forested shoreline greeted us. All was quiet until we heard a chirp coming from the shore. It sounded like a tin whistle in a rain storm. From the deck, we looked for the source of the shriek. A bald eagle was preening on a pine's twisted branches. Its white tail and head stood out in contrast to the green hues of the pines. Even before we saw this eagle, I had run across a quote by Swiss photographer Robert Frank: “The eye should learn to listen before it can see."

This eagle's homeland, the Bras D'Or, means "arms of gold." Anchored in this wilderness, I was reminded that - just as Canadians saved the area for conservation - only a persistent, sustained effort on the part of bird lovers had saved the eagle from extinction. Like the monumental effort to save an endangered species, it takes a lifelong devotion to slow photography, and sustained work, to deliberately polish our craft. I was inspired by moments of beauty that nature offered along our journey, thanks especially to this insight, and to some meaningful wildlife encounters.

Back aboard Salty Paws, we raised anchor, turned downwind and flew wing-and-wing, on to our next wilderness adventure.