Photography on the Road

The family and I headed for St. Louis, MO on June 1st, 2025. My wife is a travel nurse and she accepted a new contract in St Louis for the summer. When she accepted the contract I immediately started doing research on where the best birding spots were. Through the use of apps like eBird and Facebook I started my short list of places I wanted to visit when we got out here. I was excited because I saw on eBird and a few Facebook posts that there was this one particular park that was home to several migrating species of herons that were lifers for me. 

We got off to a rough start our first few weeks out in St. Louis between constant rain one week and sickness the next, I found it hard to get out and do photography. After several weeks of not getting out and shooting I was finally able to and I headed to the park that I had heard and read so much about, Forest Park, right outside of downtown StL. I scouted out a few locations in this massive park through eBird and Google Earth and headed there early one morning. The first bird I saw!?! A mature Little Blue Heron! Back home we have the Great Blue Heron but not the little blue. I worked my way around to the other side of the pond being careful to keep some distance. I kept a close eye on him, watching him work the edge of the pond ever so slowly, hunting for anything that he might be able to grab such as small fish, crayfish or tadpoles. I got to the far side of the pond, got low and waited for him to get closer. He continued to work toward me, still just doing his thing and I was firing off shots with my Z8 as I was so excited to be photographing this “new to me” species of bird. I got several nice shots and my encounter with him lasted about 10 minutes before something from behind him spooked him off the pond. I made my way around to the fish hatchery where there are several small ponds and where eBird reported Black-crowned Night Herons! Sure enough, there they were sitting over the pond on a fallen tree limb. I couldn't believe it, two lifer birds within 20-30 minutes of being at this very urban park. I got a few good shots of the heron sitting there with a nice background before someone running down the trail behind the pond spooked him off. I guess you got to take the good with the bad in these urban parks. 

I continued to get some great shots of the night herons sitting up in the tree. Actually better shots than I had expected. The light was amazing! As the sun got just a bit higher it was coming through the trees on the opposite side of the pond and also through the branches of the tree that the heron was sitting in. It put a stunning spot light directly on the face and eye of the heron while leaving everything else around the bird in the shadows. I got some stunning low key images of the bird preening its feathers in that scene. Next, I made my way around to the other ponds where I saw an immature little blue heron that gave me some nice looks. I also saw and photographed a green heron, which I had seen before, and another lifer, the American Bittern! 

A low key image of a Black-crowned Night Heron

I was making my way back toward the car as the sun was getting a bit harsh and the day was heating up fast. I was walking back by the same pond I had seen the immature little blue and stopped at a break in the trees to check on him again. As I was standing there looking out over the pond, something right in front of me caught my eye. It was an American Bittern hiding in the tall grass right at the edge of the pond and about six feet from me! These guys are masters of camouflage and their coloration and pattern make them blend in with their environment extremely well. I began to slowly back away, for two reasons. First I didn't want to disturb the bird anymore than I already had, and second, if I wanted to try and get a few shots I figured I was probably inside of my minimum focus distance. So I backed away a few feet, got down on the ground and tried to compose a decent shot of this bittern tucked into the vegetation that surrounded him. I did manage to get a few decent shots as I wrapped up my morning at Forest Park. 

After the success at Forest Park in just the first outing I was excited to get back. There was one more bird there that I wanted to photograph, another “lifer”, the Snowy Egret. Well I must be doing something right because on my second trip there I headed back to the fish hatchery in hopes of getting better shots of the black-crowned night herons and guess what was sitting at the pond! Three snowy egrets! I immediately dropped low and snuck my way closer to them using trees and even a building for cover. I got close enough for some good shots but far enough away to not disturb them and started working the scene. Higher angles, lower angles, camera down on the ground to put some green grass in the foreground. The only thing I didn’t like was there were two birds sitting on this big limb that had fallen over into the water, I really wanted one of them to move! Compositionally, it is just better to have one bird in your photos(or at least an odd number of them). They continued to hang out together but I was able to focus on and isolate one bird for a better composition. As I was photographing the egrets, an immature little blue heron flew in right in front of me and gave me several nice looks. 

The mature little blues are absolutely beautiful birds, with their dark blue and purple colors, but these immature birds are quite stunning themselves. The juveniles are completely white but at about one year of age they start molting into their adult plumage and are a beautiful mix of white and dark blue feathers. This phase takes place  from around 1-2 years old. After getting some nice photos of the little blue I started to make my way around to the other side of the pond. As I did, a snowy egret(probably one of the original three I saw) came flying right over me and landed on the backside of the pond. I got down on the ground, flipped out my back LCD screen, put my camera right on the ground for a nice low perspective and composed my shot across the pond. The bird was maybe 20-25 yards or so away and the trees behind him were in the shadows which provided a nice dark and contrasty background that wasn’t too distracting. This bright white bird against the shadowy background made for a lovely photograph, where the bird really stands out as the main subject with little disturbance in the background.

Snowy Egret with the background in shadows.

This morning was filled with activity and not only did I get another “lifer” bird I got some of my best looks at and photographs of a green heron. This heron came and landed on this root stump with the background trees in the shadows which again, made for a lovely scene with a darker background. These dark backgrounds can really help simplify the overall composition. Without the dark background, it would be very distracting, as you would be able to see every detail in the vegetation behind the bird. Anytime you can get a subject set in front of a darker background, especially a busier one, it really makes your subject pop and simplifies an otherwise busy and possibly ugly scene. I usually try to adjust my settings and expose for the bird and let whatever happens in the background happen. In this case the background is in shadow so I just let it go dark with a proper exposure on the brighter bird. This is more easily done when you have a bright white bird, like the snowy egret but it can be done even for darker birds like the green heron. This green heron did hang for a while and he gave me several nice shots with some different compositions. 

Green heron with the background in shadows. I just love these darker backgrounds to help simplify a scene.

After the green heron left a great egret showed up in almost the same spot. Again, I exposed for the bright white bird making for a darker, less distracting background. After seeing the great egret, the action at this particular spot died down considerably and after not seeing anything for 10-15 minutes I moved on and made my way around to another pond where I knew a little blue heron hung out.

Sure enough there he was walking right along the rocky edge of this pond. I got down on the ground, flipped out my LCD screen(so I don't have to lay completely flat on the ground), lined up a shot and couldn’t believe what I had captured. The heron caught a huge crayfish and I was lucky enough to be able to capture it. It grabbed the crayfish in its bill, flipped it up in the air and caught the crayfish in its mouth again. I caught this in action with the crayfish perfectly between its upper and lower jaw. It is such a cool shot and I love it when I am able to capture an action or behavior shot like that. After this encounter I ended up leaving this area and heading to another area of the park I hadn’t been to before. 

Little Blue Heron catching a crayfish for breakfast.

The light was getting harsh as the morning went on but I thought I would just go check it out real quick. One of the first things I came upon was a flower garden with Hummingbirds flying around! I mean come on, what an incredible morning of photography! The light in this area wasn’t too harsh as it was being shaded by some huge trees. I was able to get a few nice shots of a ruby-throated hummingbird in some nice light, eating nectar out of some red flowers with some beautiful background colors. I walked around the lake and ended the day with a few shots of a great egret flying low over the lake. This day ranks up there with some of the best photography days I’ve ever had.

One Saturday afternoon my family and I headed to Edward “Ted” and Pat Jones-Confluence State Park. This is where the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers meet. In order to get there you drive through an area known as Riverlands Migratory Bird Sanctuary. We saw Bald Eagles, Great Egrets and Gulls down at the river. As we continued to drive we made our way through some farm fields, some of which were flooded or had what seemed to be seasonal ponds in them. There, we saw killdeer, sandpipers, egrets and Greater Yellowlegs! I did not get any photos because it was the middle of the day, the light was harsh and definitely not flattering for good photography and I didn’t want to get out of the car and disturb the birds that were just hanging out feeding and doing their thing. We just observed and enjoyed viewing them from the car. We continued toward the state park and I saw a sign or some type of field marker ahead. I could faintly make out something sitting on top of it. I stopped the car, grabbed the binoculars and saw that it was an American Kestrel! I got the camera ready and slowly drove forward. He let us get pretty close and I got some cool shots of this guy sitting on top of this marker. I normally don’t like to include anything manmade into my wildlife photos but in the midwest, where kestrels love to hunt over ag fields, they use things like power lines, road signs and this field marker to perch on and hunt from all the time. So for this scenario, I thought it was appropriate to include the marker. I had seen kestrels before, but it was always just driving down the highway and spotting them sitting up on power lines. This was the first time I had photographed one. This tiny falcon is roughly the same size as a mourning dove and they are simply stunning looking birds. They are fierce hunters that feed on small mammals and insects and usually hunt from a perch over open fields. Sometimes you can watch them swoop down from their perch, hover over an area waiting for prey(yes, they can truly hover)and then pounce on that prey from their position in the air. They really are remarkable little falcons. 

American Kestrel sitting on a field marker.

Our time here in St. Louis is drawing to an end and so I am trying to make the best of the last few times I’ll be able to get out and do some photography here. A bucket list photo I’ve had for some time is an indigo bunting on sunflowers. I found a county park that has a sunflower patch so I headed out there early one Saturday morning. I arrived right at sunrise and heard many different birds out in the sunflowers but didn’t see any. The wind was about 10-15 MPH that morning so I thought maybe it was keeping the birds down on the ground and tucked into the sunflowers instead of coming up and perching on the flower itself. I didn’t get much at all that morning and ended the day with a few shots of an American Goldfinch on a half eaten sunflower but no buntings. So I headed out again early the next morning after seeing the forecast for the wind was much better. Sure enough the indigo buntings were out and about. Singing and perching up high on the sunflowers. Bucket list photo achieved! The Indigo Bunting is such a beautiful bird in any setting with its bright blue colors, but put them in a sunflower field and the yellows and greens of the field make their vibrant colors pop even more than usual.

Indigo Bunting sitting in a sunflower field.

This was my last outing in St Louis and as i write the end of this blog we are back home in Indiana. It is good to be back even though my family and I very much enjoy our travels and adventures. I am looking forward to getting back to some more familiar places and I am definitely looking forward to the best season of the year…fall!

Photography Tips: I plan on including a “photography tips” section at the end of each blog that is relevant to the photos presented in the blog. First off is a compositional tip. As always compositional rules are meant to be broken and they don’t always work for every scenario but I typically like to compose my shots loosely around the “rule of thirds” where my subject sits at one of those “third” points. I also always like to give my subject room to look. Or in other words, whatever way my subject is looking, whether it be to the right or left, I will put space between the subject and edge of the frame on that side. As you can see in the photos above, like the green heron, he is looking to the viewers right, so there is more space on the right side of the frame than on the left. This gives space for your subject to “look into” and it doesn’t make the subject feel crowded. In the image with the indigo bunting on sunflowers, the bird is looking to the viewers left so there is more space in the frame on the left side. 

I like to photograph using full manual mode. It allows for the most flexibility from an exposure standpoint and then an artistic standpoint. It allows me to make my image as correct as possible in camera. It allows me to do those low key shots and those darker background shots as I have full control over shutter speed, aperture and ISO. When photographing wildlife I always shoot my lens “wide open” which just means it is at its maximum aperture(lowest f-stop number). So then I only have to worry about the other two things, shutter speed and ISO. I have my camera set up in a way that I can change both easily and with two different hands, so I can work them both at the same time if needed. Typically in wildlife photography we are working with higher shutter speeds, which could mean higher ISO’s. To get that low key image or that dark background and a proper exposure on your subject you would first drop your ISO. This is going to darken the overall image, making sure to protect the highlights on your subject(especially if it’s a white bird) and the lower ISO is also going to give you a less noisy and “cleaner” image. You can let it go as dark as you want or feel comfortable doing. Keep in mind that if you are shooting raw files you can easliy recover shadows and darker places in post processing. We want our ISO to be as low as possible anyways, while still getting a proper exposure, so that is the first thing I adjust. If it's still not dark enough for me and I am at my lowest ISO I will then adjust my shutter speed up, making it faster, possibly going from say 1/1600 of a second to 1/2500 of a second or even faster if need be. 

I really hope you enjoyed this first blog and thank you so much for taking the time to read it. I am going to try and put out one per quarter to start with but they may come more frequently in the future. I hope you got some enjoyment and some useful information out of this blog. Stay tuned to my website and social media channels for information on the next one! 

Thanks,

Ty