When I joined seven other photographers for a four-day experience in New Mexico led by Muench Workshop expert instructors Wayne Suggs and Pam Dorner, it was January and the temperature was in the teens.

That's me on the far left. Coming from tropical Hawaii and anticipating I might freeze my ass off and not enjoy the experience, I packed – and wore – all the warm gear I could think of including a wool hat, a neck gator, two kinds of hand warmers, long underwear, a Canada Goose coat, and Sorel waterproof lined boots.

Spoiler alert: I survived.

I also brought a sturdy tripod, two Olympus OM-1 camera bodies, a 12-100 zoom lens, and a 100-400 telephoto. Compared to others, I traveled light!

My colleagues were all experienced photographers. Some hailed from several of our united states and some were from international locales, including Hong Kong and Italy. We met at a generic Holiday Inn Express in Socorro, 75 miles south of Albuquerque, to set up our home base.

Following a day-one presentation on anticipating bird behavior, we headed north in two vehicles to the Ladd S. Gordon Waterfowl Complex (informally known as Bernardo), where we saw thousands of sandhill cranes and snow geese and practiced photographing birds in flight.

Here’s a tip: wild birds take off into the wind. So, if you feel the breeze blowing into your face, all you will get are shots of bird butt.

Success! A sandhill crane taking off in the early morning light.

In the hotel room that night, when I imported over two thousand shots into my computer, I realized that most of my bird photos were out of focus, even those taken at a shutter speed of 1/4000th of a second.

The trick to get sharp images of birds in flight was to pan in the same trajectory as their flight path (and let the background go blurry).

The next morning, we met for a cup of coffee at 5:45 AM and headed south to the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge for our sunrise shoot. I brought a plastic collapsable stool, so I could get down low without having to sit on the frozen tundra.

Over 20 species of ducks and geese regularly spend part of their year here. Sandhill cranes, in particular, are winter visitors – typically from late October through late January. They fly 7,500 miles roundtrip from Alaska and Canada every year. You’d think they’d pick somewhere warmer!

The prehistoric-looking cranes are often found in pairs; in fact, they mate for life. They spend the night in water to protect themselves from predators. Near dawn, they take off in groups – at a whopping 35 miles per hour – in search of food. I got good at panning and snapping.

My favorite evening shoot was the night of the full moon. As the sun was setting, we witnessed hundreds of snow geese flying towards us with a beautiful moonrise over the mountains.

Sometimes, if there wasn’t much color in a photo, I converted it into a black-and-white, as I did with these shots (below). Clockwise left to right: a bald eagle surveying the landscape, a lone crane stuck in the ice, two perched ravens, and a flock of snow geese.

Mornings were so cold, you could see the birds' breath.

We got a chance to edit some of our photos back at the hotel, and we each picked shots to share with the group on a large-screen TV. Even though we were all in the same place each day, we all had distinctly different images.

The good news is that I’d say I achieved my goal of having one shot worthy of framing. In fact, I’m going to have a hard time narrowing it down. If you have a favorite, please let me know.

Bonus for Birders

To help with your birding at home, here are two applications that are very useful in identifying birds:

Picture Bird is a smart bird identifier app that can recognize any bird species by photo or sound.

Another option is Merlin Bird ID from Cornell University. Answer three simple questions about a bird you are trying to identify, and Merlin will give you a list of possible matches. Magic!

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