Conowingo Dam

Today I made my first trip of the Fall to Conowingo Dam. I've seen recent trip reports on Facebook and it seemed that there was reason to hope for some action on this beautiful, cool, clear day. No such luck.

It was bad from the beginning. I drove through two traffic jams before even leaving Virginia. Then it was slow going all the way to Baltimore. I arrived around 7:30, chose a spot right down on the water among the rocks, set the tripod up, and waited for some action.

I got a heron at the beginning.

Great Blue Heron

Then there was a series of cormorant swim-bys and fights. A few eagles were perched on the electrical towers and rocks on the far shore. And there was a grand total of one eagle fishing event, well away from me. Previous visits had few cormorants, so I was at least able to shoot some of them. But overall, it was a disappointing visit.

Cormorant with an Eel

Close Pass

With a Fish

Cormorant with an Enormous Fish

So, quite a disappointing day... But at least I was able to watch several cormorant fights. I've seen plenty of cormorants over the years, they're usually alone, and usually I ignore them because I find them uninteresting. With nothing else to see this time, I watched several events where a cormorant came to the surface with a fish, only to have several other cormorants converge and try to steal the fish. The bird with the fish would dive underwater to get away, then resurface, only for the fight to resume. I've seen this kind of fish stealing behavior in eagles quite often, but this was a first with cormorants.

Eventually I gave up and headed home. To make matters even more annoying, traffic was heavy all the way home.

This was my first outing with my new tripod. I got a Gitzo 3 series. I selected one that extends to a ridiculously high height, above my head actually. I wanted one that could put the camera well above my head so I could shoot high objects while I stand upright. My experience with the eclipse and an old Manfrotto tripod was aggravating because I couldn't get the camera up to a comfortable height. My choice was to crouch or kneel. And because the sun was so high in the sky as to seem nearly vertical, I couldn't tilt the camera enough, so I wound up extending one leg more than the others. This changed the center of gravity and made it uncomfortably unbalanced, so I set it up low to minimize the distance my camera would fall in the event it tipped over. Fortunately it never fell over, but that taught me that I needed a versatile, sturdy tripod that could extend to at least my height. The Gitzo tripod that I selected was on sale when I bought it for even less than a more standard height model. I also got it without a center column because I think center columns are useless.

To the tripod, I added a Wimberley gimbal head. I researched several other heads, and kept returning to Wimberley as the safe choice.

So anyway, about using the tripod. I set up on the shore right next to the water because I like the lower angle that it gives. Conowingo Dam's shore is a steep, rocky incline except for the concrete terrace. The water was very low; setting up on the terrace would place me much higher than I like. So I fooled with the tripod height for a while until settling on a comfortable height. Bottom line: it's sweet. I couldn't be happier with the tripod and head. Following action was effortless.