Story concept.
Jenny and I left town at 6:00am, headed west towards Rogers Pass. The air was cool and smoke-filled, an unusual combination for mid October in Montana. To be honest, I had not stopped thinking about this trip since plans were solidified about a month prior. We were about to spend three days at the banding station with Rob Domenech and his team at Raptor View Research Institute, hoping to trap and band golden eagles.
Since a young age, I have had a fascination for, perhaps even an obsession with, birds of prey. Growing up in lower New York, I can recall times of begging my parents to take my sister and I upstate to the Catskills, where I would have a real chance at seeing a bald eagle sitting along the Delaware River or the Neversink Reservoir. We would make the annual pilgrimage to Eagle Fest in the fall, and be sure never to miss Bill Streeter’s raptor program, as he walked around a room holding real-life hawks and eagles - non-releasable birds used for education - right above our heads. Years later when I bought my first car, I would drive to the local hawk count on weekends, Mount Peter Hawk Watch, and sit with the counters, helping to locate migrating raptors in an open sky and learn how to identify them. I would try to take pictures of the birds, and then complain to my parents about how I needed a longer lens to be able to see their eyes. When I couldn’t photograph them, I would draw them. Undoubtedly, these moments have shaped my interests today and this obsession with birds has become the focus of my work behind a camera.