Yesterday I went down to our local Mountain Equipment Coop (MEC) to try and remedy my equipment shortcomings of the morning. I wanted to attach both my bear spray and binoculars to the shoulder straps of my small back pack so that they were easily accessible. Like you don’t want to be rummaging around in your back pack while a bear is eating your arm off.

This morning with my new accoutrements I set out to have breakfast with the nesting goose. Hoping to avoid my mistake of yesterday I stopped at the edge of the forest and wipped out my binoculars from their new shoulder strap position and carefully surveyed the beaver dam. All looked well with no Gander in sight. Three quarters of the way over to the nest I could see something was different. Out came the binoculars and I could see that the gander was in the nest also, sitting just behind the hen. I maneuvered my chair into a good safe distance and sat down to eat. Both birds had their eye on me but after ten minutes the hen had given up but not the gander. Munching away and not really paying much attention I thought I saw a little yellow blob pop up just between the two birds. Out with the binoculars and sure enough it’s a little gosling and he is giving me the eye ball.

I grab the camera and start blasting away but I’m too far away to get a decent shot. Not knowing how the birds will react I decide not to move any closer. The little guy scoots over the to the other side of his mother to get another look at me. By this time both adults are ignoring me.

Another fifteen minutes go my and the little guy decides to go for a swim. The gander immediately gets up and stays right with him.

They get about ten yards from the nest and the hen decides she wants to go too. The family shortly disappears into the weeds but I can occasionally see the parents stick their heads up and look around. I consider going in close to the nest to see if there are any more eggs but decide not to be too pushy with the new parents. The sun comes out and for the next five minutes the frogs all began to croak and then stop. After half an hour the birds are some ways off and sitting on the ground relaxing. It’s time to take a chance. I ski pole over to the nest through the goo and look inside but can not see any other eggs. If there are other eggs they have been covered up with goose down and weeds. We’l just have to wait and see if any more emerge in the next few days.

I was sitting waiting for the geese to come back to the nest but another half hour later they were still feeding and my mind began to wander back to a discussion Colin Jago and I were having over on auspiciousdragon.

The camera lens does not capture everything about a subject nor necessarily does it capture what we want. The same thing applies to our eyes, we do not see everything about a subject, nor may we see those things that are of interest to us. We have many other sensors and other stuff rattling around in our brain that together work to produce a perception of our subject. It is this perception or elements of that perception that we may want to capture with our photographs.

Here is a comment I made on one of Ctein’s articles from Top

“The more you get into visual perceptions the more you realize that cameras (digital or film) do not capture what we see despite what most people think.”

And Ctein’s response which says it all.

“Dear Bob,

Preaching to the Choir! Sometimes I talk about “plausible photography” as opposed to “realistic photography.” In other words, Does it pass the believability test?

I’ve often described my life’s artistic work as an effort to make prints that show people what I *saw*. Fantastically difficult and not remotely the same as making technically accurate photographs. Sometimes it involves real cheats to produce something that nonetheless looks visually correct.”

Back to this little gosling. It was my perception that he was curious and a little rambunctious. It was also my perception that the parents cared for the little bugger and wanted to protect him. These were the four things that I wanted to capture in my photographs of moment but alas I didn’t even come close.

I did however get bored watching the feeding geese and fired off a shot that for me shows one aspect of the goo that I’m sitting in.

It’s not really the goo but rather the stuff on top of the goo.

Compendium of related Canada Geese posts.