Where you find American Avocets, you will usually find Black-Necked Stilts. Bear River is no exception, though on this visit we saw a lot more Avocets than Stilts. I tend to prefer pictures of Avocets to pictures of Black-Necked Stilts, but that doesn’t stop me from trying to get good shots of the Stilts.
Usually, I prefer close-ups like this shot of a Stilt probing the mud flats for food,
or this shot of one taken at medium range with it’s reflection in the water,
but my favorite shot on this visit was this long shot showing the stilt in its natural habitat.
Sometimes I think we let our equipment determine what we photograph and how we photograph it. There’s no arguing that expensive equipment can capture better photographs when used well, but our equipment also tends to determine what we emphasize in our photography. I’ve spent a lot of money on telephoto lenses (probably far too much), so I tend to emphasize closeups and ignore better shots I might have gotten if I’d backed off the zoom.
Close-ups can show us details we would otherwise never see, but they eliminate the surrounding environment. By necessity, the photographer feels that environment, but it can’t be experienced in the same way sitting in front of a computer screen.