365 Photo Project - September

September was a fun and sometimes challenging month for photos. 

I began the month with a trip to the Missouri Botanical Gardens for the Japanese Festival.  Then I had two weekends at the Kansas City Renaissance Festival presenting programs for World Bird Sanctuary on the weekends.  Mixed in with all of the festivals I managed to do a little bird watching here and there.

The Missouri Botanical Gardens Japanese Festival is the largest festival of its kind in the United States.  I arrived about 9 am and left about 6pm, so needless to say I had a good time.  The weather was beautiful, so the photo opportunities were everywhere, including flowers, people, objects, and dragonflies.

Choosing photos from the Japanese Festival was a real challenge, but I finally narrowed it down to two.  The first is of some very pretty little parasols they had for sale.  These were sitting out on the lawn to advertise the designs they had available.  

The second photo from this day was of an orange dragonfly hovering over a pink lotus flower.  There were so many dragonflies and lotus flowers that it was hard to choose.

The next photo is from the Kansas City Renaissance Festival.  The World Bird Sanctuary  presents programs on weekends starting Labor Day week, and this year running through Columbus Day weekend.

Since we have limited time to do our presentations we usually have three people presenting these programs to make them move along.  That being the case, I would often use the backstage time while waiting to go on to attempt to take a photo or two through the crack in the divider between the audience and the backstage area. 

Intern Jess Hill and MacGyver the Harris' Hawk

Photographing a bird in full flight through a small crack can be very challenging.  I did however manage to get this photo of one of our interns Jess Hill releasing MacGyver, the Harris Hawk, for his flight up to the stage.   I love the intent stare in his eyes as he focuses on the speaker’s glove.  I also love how the one wing almost looks like you can see through it due to the movement of the wing.

The one thing I have learned with this project is that there are amazing photo opportunities all around you and you never know when they are going to appear. 

Submitted by Cathy Spahn, World Bird Sanctuary