EP 463. Full Plume Photo

 

The Art of Waterfowl Photography

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast. Today I’m in the virtual studio with Jen Barton, Full Plume Photo from California. Jen, I’ve been a huge fan, I followed your account and kept up with your photography for a long time. How are you today?

Jen Barton: I’m doing well, thank you.

Ramsey Russell: Good. I love, yeah, I follow a lot of photography accounts because it’s not like I’m out there hunting all the time and when I’m not, there’s something about those beautiful feathers in flight and on the water that it just enamored me, it captivate me every time. But I’m a huge fan, and I was surprised to learn that you’ve only been doing photography for a little bit. How in the world did you get into something like wildlife photography, but specifically waterfowl photography?

Jen Barton: Well, I started duck hunting with my husband probably about 7 years ago, and I had so much fun the first season that I was definitely feeling the duck depression after the season ended, and my husband had given me a little kit camera from Sony for Christmas that year, and he said, hey, well, why don’t you go walk out to the marsh and see if you can take some pictures of ducks? And the first time he went with me and we hiked around and I felt the light bulb come on, I was like, oh, this is incredible. And those first pictures were so bad. I didn’t really know how to use my camera and didn’t know how to hide or plan for where to be with the light to get the best images of the ducks. But it sparked something that has stuck around.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Jen Barton: And taken off from there, for sure.

Ramsey Russell: And specifically waterfowl, you focus on.

Jen Barton: Yeah. I really appreciate how beautiful ducks are, and we are very lucky in California that we get to see them in full plume towards the end of our season. And we have a lot of ducks that will also breed here a lot of our cinnamon teal you can find in local spots really late into the year. And so that’s definitely been my focus, what I’ve been drawn to, because they are so stunning.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. And I was surprised to learn also, that you’re not from California, you’re from Illinois. And my mind, when somebody’s from Illinois, I gravitate what it must be from Chicago, but you’re not. You’re from smack out in the middle of nowhere, Illinois. Because I’ve driven there before, I’m like, there’s only one way get here, and there’s no shortcuts. Where are you from in Illinois? And how did you grow up? And yeah, I was done. I stopped asking myself another question.

Jen Barton: That’s okay. I grew up in Nebo, Illinois that was the closest village, but our farm was located outside of town. And I really appreciate my childhood growing up. Back then, I was sad because I didn’t have a neighborhood of kids that I could run around with on bicycles and cause trouble after school, it was just me riding the bus home and getting on a horse and riding around in the hills or doing something on the farm. But the next closest town is where I went to school, and that’s Pittsfield, Illinois, which is where you’ve been. And it’s always fun whenever somebody knows where Pittsfield is, because not too many people have been there. But it is known for being really good duck hunting and also really good whitetail hunting.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. And that’s what you grew up hunting, was whitetail deer.

Jen Barton: Yeah, that was my main interest was whitetail. I did not shoot a lot of big bucks because we did lease a lot of our land to outfitters for those trophy deer. That was the priority, much more lucrative to do that. I didn’t need to shoot the big bucks, but we would definitely go on Doe patrol.

Ramsey Russell: Did your dad or granddad introduce you to hunting? Were they hunters themselves?

Jen Barton: They weren’t really hunters. My dad, he would hunt whenever I was really little. I remember him, shooting some bucks and bringing venison back home, but he really didn’t like to eat it, so he kind of didn’t keep up with the hunting. And he always said that, he couldn’t deer hunt and he couldn’t golf because he would just sit there and think of all the other things that he should be doing instead.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. If it weren’t for modern day cell phones, I don’t know what I would do. Because when I’m sitting in a deer stand, I’ve got time to think, and I turn my ringer off and my mind is racing. Here’s what I could be doing, but at least I’m answering emails, I tell myself or making small edits on something off my iPhone, and it’ll get in your head that way. And I see that happening, I think, a lot, Jen, as we hunt, when we’re younger, as we get older, we get busy, a lot of my clients, they get busy with business and with life. And hunting becomes a second or third priority because the demands of just being an adult sometimes.

Jen Barton: Yeah, I really had to learn how to turn things off. And that’s where whitetail hunting and sometimes duck hunting has been really valuable for me because I have always been a go, I have to be doing something, I have to be working, that work ethic was instilled in me growing up on the farm. But there is something to be said about learning to appreciate the stillness and calming your mind down and turning off the distractions and being present in the moment.

Ramsey Russell: Absolutely. There’s a lot to be said for being present in the moment. If you can just watch the world awaken and see the shadows on the water and the color on the water or hear or see the shadows flying through the air, it’s just being there sometimes that really kind of matters. I’m not there to watch the sun rise and watch the shadows change, I am there to pull the trigger some, but there’s a lot to be said for the total experience of it all. When you grew up where you did in Illinois, did you know of or were you aware of my buddy Jeff out there?

Jen Barton: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Was he a public figure in your world?

Jen Barton: Definitely. I was not interested in duck hunting, but I knew who he was and some of my classmates in school worked for him and were really big in the calls and the Foyles migrator call and everything like that. And so, I knew who he was and whatnot, but it wasn’t a focus of mine at that time. I was very much 100% focus on, I wanted to get into vet school early and I wanted to be a doctor as quick as possible. And so pretty much all my time was spent at the vet clinic, cleaning kennels, answering phones, learning as much as I could and taking as many classes as I could to move on quicker.

Ramsey Russell: Getting into vet school is not easy, it can be as difficult almost as getting into really medical school, can it? I mean, it’s a lot of science and a lot of biology it’s way over my pay grade, I can tell you, way over my intelligence level. All the vets I’ve known have been very smart. But how far back did you know you wanted to be a veterinarian? As a teenager? As a child?

Jen Barton: I would say whenever I was 12, it really clicked. I grew up showing Arabian horses and one of my horses got cut up pretty badly in a tangle with another horse and a fence. And the local vet came out, Dr. Steve Nash, and I watched him sew up my horse and ask questions and just really wanted to learn all the things that he was doing. I was entranced by it, and he told my dad, hey, whenever she gets her license, have her come and work at the clinic and we’ll get her on the best path to get into vet school. And that’s pretty much how that happened. I got my license whenever I was 16 and started cleaning kennels and doing all the autoclaving for all the surgery packs. And then I learned how to draw blood on all the pigs and cows and did all the farm calls and it really grew from there.

Ramsey Russell: And you ended up in vet school in Illinois?

Jen Barton: Yeah. The University of Illinois in Champaign. I did not finish my bachelor degree, I got in a year early. So I always like to say I’m a doctor without the BS. So I turned 21 my first year of vet school in Champaign and worked like I had never worked before, with my class schedule and learning and having fun with all my classmates.

Ramsey Russell: What did you think when you were 21 years old, starting vet school, what did you think? Or where did you think you would work? Back at home? Is that what’s kind of -?

The Crazy West Coast World 

…if they ever got their politics right, I’d move to California tomorrow, because it’s an amazing state, and it’s got incredible duck hunting history and lots of duck hunting and big game hunting and fishing and everything.

Jen Barton: Yeah. I always planned on coming back to that clinic and never would have dreamed that I would be in California. But it’s funny, we’re like, life takes you if you just say yes sometimes.

Ramsey Russell: What did you think about California at that stage of life? What was your awareness of state of California? And I say this because I’ve got a lot of friends and a lot of clients and a lot of associates from out in California. I love California. And I’ll say that somebody asked me one time, Jen, had I ever been anywhere that I would consider living outside of the state of Mississippi, and right off the bat, I go, if they ever got their politics right, I’d move to California tomorrow, because it’s an amazing state, and it’s got incredible duck hunting history and lots of duck hunting and big game hunting and fishing and everything. It’s a great state. But there was a time in my life when I was young, it was just a crazy world out there on the west coast.

Jen Barton: Yeah. Whenever I thought of California back then, I pictured what you see in the movies. Green Hills, the ocean, Hollywood, and after my husband and I graduated, we drove him and his belongings all the way across the US back to southern California. And whenever we crossed over into California, it was just brown and barren and the desert. And I was like, this is California. This sucks. But eventually we made it to where it was greener, but the brown really threw me off during the summer. And that was one reason why we didn’t stay in Southern California is, the lack of topography, and it was very brown and very flat where we were. I missed the hills and the green, I needed trees. And so Santa Cruz, up in the redwoods here, I’m much happier. It feels more remote where we are. It’s much more green. I can see the ocean from our house. It’s really a nice little place that we have found that gives me a little bit of everything that I need to be happy.

Ramsey Russell: So you live in redwood country?

Jen Barton: Yeah, for sure.

Ramsey Russell: What was it like the first time you ever saw the redwoods? I’ve seen them once, and it was breathtaking.

Jen Barton: Yeah, the sheer size of them is something that it’s hard to really take in until you’re standing underneath them.

Ramsey Russell: I’m from Mississippi, but I’ve got pine trees in my backyard, and then you walk up to those redwood forests, and I don’t know what to think about it. We actually hiked down a trail, we were told that the tallest tree in the world was, and they wouldn’t tell us which of the 2 or 3 trees it was. But still, just to sit at the base of one and look up, it was unbelievable. I can’t imagine what the first Europeans thought when they stumbled into that one time. I just can’t even imagine having ridden a little covered wagon or a horseback all the way from wherever, Plymouth Rock, all the way out to western California. So that’s where you all settled. And is there a lot of duck hunting opportunity there in that part of California?

Jen Barton: Not in Santa Cruz proper, but it is kind of a good jumping off place. I can go and make it to the rice and the north, like towards Sacramento. I can be up there in a couple hours. I can be in the San Francisco bay in an hour. I can be in Los Banos in an hour and a half. So I have a variety of options that I can get to in the morning, and I like variety, so it’s really a good place to be for what I like to do.

Ramsey Russell: He’s from California, and that’s what took you all back out to California. Was he a duck hunter since he was young?

Getting Roped Into California Duck Hunting

 In southern California duck hunting is better than the deer hunting.

Jen Barton: No. He had never hunted before we met, and we were at a trivia night, it was my 4th year of vet school and his last year of law school, and somebody had mentioned that I hunt, and so I became much more interesting. Yeah. So we got to know each other and started dating, and I took him on his first whitetail hunt that year in Illinois. And then whenever we came back to California, he picked up duck hunting because he very much enjoys hunting and cooking. He’s a really good chef, and that was a good way for him to get outside and get out of the city and find some wild game. In southern California duck hunting is better than the deer hunting.

Ramsey Russell: How long had he been duck hunting when he roped you into it?

Jen Barton: I thought he had been so many more times than he had, so I think he’d gone hunting like, 3 times. And then he was like, you got to come duck hunting. I was like, okay. And he told me to buy breathable waders. And I was like, I’m not spending that much money on breathable waders. I can barely make my student loan payments because I wasn’t making very much at that point, being a new vet. And so I bought neoprene waders from Amazon and had them delivered. And I was like, okay, I’m ready to go. And we went to Wister for my first duck hunt, and it was 90° and I almost died. I was sweating like you wouldn’t believe. He got one green winged teal. He was very excited about this teal. And I was like, this is stupid, I’m going to die out here in Wister. And I was like, how can you even hit those things? They’re so fast. They were here and gone before I was even able to lift my gun. And so the change from whitetail to duck hunting couldn’t have been more different. The fast and furious teal versus the slow, boring sits for whitetail. And I didn’t see how I was going to fit into the picture with the duck hunting. But then we started taking out my labrador.

Ramsey Russell: Here we go.

Jen Barton: I was like, oh, well, look at him. He is so happy going out and getting these ducks. Well, now I need to hunt more and get more ducks for the dog. And then I just kind of took off from there.

Ramsey Russell: Had that lab been trained to duck hunt?

Jen Barton: No, he’s still not trained to duck hunt, but he thinks he’s a good duck hunter. He’s 14, he’s really struggling right now just to kind of get around, but he still super happy. And he lives for ducks. If you get a duck out, game over. Yes, to investigate it and carry it around all day.

Ramsey Russell: So you go on this first duck hunt, it’s 90°, you’re wearing 5 mil neoprene waders, I’m assuming you had to walk a considerable distance because it’s public land.

Jen Barton: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And he shoots not you, but he shoots a single green wing teal.

Jen Barton: Yeah.

A Purpose in Life

And I’ve never seen him, like, prance back to the blind so happy than what he was in that moment.

Ramsey Russell: And you’re like, I don’t get it. I don’t get this at all. I wish I could get my money back on these waders, I bet you were thinking. And so you go out again, and this time you bring your yellow lab who’s never duck hunted, what happened on that hunt? Was it just the magic of, wait a minute, my dog is responding to this, seeing him happy or did you shoot some ducks? What happened during that second hunt?

Jen Barton: I still did not shoot any ducks the second hunt. And we were at San Jacinto, and we stayed there all day, and my husband shot a couple teal and I went out with the dog to show him where the teal landed so he could grab it because he didn’t see it. And I’ve never seen him, like, prance back to the blind so happy than what he was in that moment.

Ramsey Russell: Your dog or your husband?

Jen Barton: My dog. But I’ll remember that moment forever, just seeing that dog light up.

Ramsey Russell: He would have been an older dog than Jen. He’d have been 7, 8 years old at that point. And you went out there and he didn’t make the mark, he didn’t know what he was doing, just hanging out with his people. You walk him out. What did he do when he saw that green winged teal laid on the water? Did he seize it? Did he walk up to it curiously? He grabbed it. Instinct kicked in.

Jen Barton: Yeah. He didn’t even think for a second. Well, he usually doesn’t think. But he totally grabbed it, and he was gentle with it and ran right back to the blind and gave to my husband, and he was ready to go for the next one.

Ramsey Russell: So, in that moment, you were evolving as a duck hunter, and your yellow lab was evolving as a duck hunter. For 7 years, he’s been a pet, and all of a sudden, he puts his mouth on a green wing, he got back to the blind handed to your husband. Now, is he sitting alert, looking for another duck to come into the decoys?

Jen Barton: Yeah, that was probably the last calm retrieve he’d ever done. After that, he was insane.

Ramsey Russell: He found his purpose in life.

Jen Barton: Yeah. And then he became an absolute dragon, could not be controlled. And so I tried to do some training for steadiness with him, and that helped a little bit. But I still couldn’t take him on a lot of hunts because he was just unmanageably wild. He was definitely addicted to quack. And it was finally, whenever we moved to Santa Cruz and I started going to Los Banos, that he was older and wasn’t seen and hearing as well and was a little slower. Then he kind of settled and became a better hunting partner than what he was in his prime. So the last couple of years that I hunted with him, he was pretty good.

Ramsey Russell: How far along into this progress 7 years ago was it before you’re hunting with your husband and I’m assuming this yellow lab. What’s this yellow lab’s name?

Jen Barton: Ruger.

Ramsey Russell: Ruger. Ruger found his purpose in life, and there was no stopping him. When did you shoot your first duck? Or was that requisite to you starting to enjoy duck hunting more?

Jen Barton: Yeah, I shot my first duck at Wister. And it was funny because it was my husband’s reservation, and we invited a couple other friends to come with us. And the first flight of the day, right at shoot light, all these things were flying in front of me, and so I got really excited, and I shot one, and it landed right beside me. And I was like, oh, my God, did anybody see that? And my husband’s friend Dan was like, Jen, stop shooting the coots. And so that was, like, my first connection was a coot. But later on that day, because I was really nervous after that, I stopped shooting because I didn’t know what I was shooting at. And so I just sat there and let other people shoot. But at the end of the morning, my friend Dan gave me his gun, and we were sitting on the check and talking about Duck ID, and he said, hey, here’s the duck coming. It was a female hen gadwall. And I used his gun and gone on it, and I shot the gadwall. And so that was my first duck, that was a hen gadwall.

Ramsey Russell: I wouldn’t feel too bad about those coots. I was with some full grown men who shall remain unnamed. But we had an ongoing joke down in Mexico about the Coot Killers Association. Because it was the first light, and there were just ducks going every which way, and I had my phone out. It was teal and shovelers mostly, and just that first little flurry right there at daylight. And when the first shot went off and everything started rallying, and one of them shot a coot, and the dog brought it back, and a little bit later, like, there’s a teal, there’s this, and I’m sitting behind him, and a coot flies by. Well, that’s a coot. I said, well, it didn’t stop you before. We wore him out for the rest of the week about shooting that coot. But I’ve been to countries like Azerbaijan, they wanted us to shoot the “blackbirds”, that’s their “favorite duck” to eat in Azerbaijan is a coot. And the way they prepared it, I think we would all go out there and start shooting coot if we could cook like they did, like they prepared that coot. It was a very good bird. So you shoot this first hen, gadwall, now you’re officially a duck hunter. Did Ruger fetch it up?

Jen Barton: He actually wasn’t there that day. We had my friend’s dog, who is much more accomplished. And yeah, he was at home with a friend.

Ramsey Russell: Okay. Tell me how you evolved as a duck hunter. I mean, to me, it’s a monumental moment when somebody shoots their first duck. What was it like for you, late 20s, early 30s, to hold that first duck? A hen gadwall, which I’ll share this with you. My first real duck was a pair of mallards hunted way past dark when I was too young to know better. But I can remember what I would say was the beginning of who I am now was a hen gadwall, and I had to look up in a bird book about what it was. I’m like, what is this? I mean, I knew it was a duck, but it wasn’t one I recognized. I was a young man.

Jen Barton: Whenever I got the gadwall in my hands, all I could think about was, I can’t wait to prepare this as a meal because even when I’m deer hunting now, I was at home a couple years ago and I had a really nice, it’s 10 point buck in front of me. And what got me is I thought of all the recipes that I would make with it and the loins, and I thought about breaking it down, and all those things get into my head, I ended up shooting underneath it instead of just focusing on, the buck. But whenever I got that bird in my hands, I just really wanted to figure out, like, how are we going to prepare this? Because that was ultimately, like, why we were out there was to try to get good things to eat.

Ramsey Russell: How did you cook it?

Jen Barton: Well, I plucked the whole thing, and then I found out that at Wister, sometimes the fat on the gadwalls is not the most delicious thing.

Ramsey Russell: Because of something they’re eating, probably.

Jen Barton: Yeah. I was like, oh, it kind of tastes a little like the pond, but very happy to eat it and wanted to try and get teal next time because I hear they taste better.

Ramsey Russell: It’s hard to beat a green winged teal. But parts of California have got so much rice, I bet those gadwalls taste good out there in that rice, because everything else does. It’s just such a clean, nice fat, when they’ve been feeding on that California rice. It’s unbelievable. Some of the wigeons and pintails and teal and green wings I’ve eaten from out of those rice fields are just amazing.

Jen Barton: Yeah. The most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten, hands down, have been canvasbacks in the rice.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Jen Barton: Pintails in the rice are hard to beat.

California Duck Species 

So you go to the rice and you can shoot all the puddlers that are in the rice, but then it’s fun to go out and shoot divers and shoot sea ducks.

Ramsey Russell: So in the last several years since you first shot a coot, then a gadwall, I mean, you’ve shot a lot of different species of ducks in California.

Jen Barton: Yeah, it’s been really fun to just go to all the different places that California has to offer. So you go to the rice and you can shoot all the puddlers that are in the rice, but then it’s fun to go out and shoot divers and shoot sea ducks. And that always felt really wild to me, that we could go out and shoot a bunch of ducks in the San Francisco Bay.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, yeah.

Jen Barton: And I always get a kick out of it.

Ramsey Russell: I think that it’s one of the best kept secrets on earth that there’s so many divers and sea ducks out on San Francisco Bay. I’ve been fortunate to hunt with some friends out there, and it was an amazing hunt. It was just a great hunt.

Jen Barton: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Do you have a special recipe for cooking sea ducks?

Jen Barton: Definitely. Breast them out. And the breast is so big and so substantial. I mean, you can cook it like a steak. And you like snow geese out here, a lot of times, breast out the snow geese and keep the legs, but you can take that breast and salt and pepper and cook it like a steak, rare, medium rare, and it’s really good. So if you wanted to do that with a scoter, just make sure to get all the fat off of it. Cut them up, put them in fajitas. My husband’s made empanadas with scoter, and we do a lot of sausage, summer sausage, and chorizo breakfast sausage, things like that with them.

Ramsey Russell: I bet that chorizo is good.

Jen Barton: It is good, yeah.

Saskatchewan Experience with Snow Geese

I think in the fall, they’re one of my favorite birds on the prairie to eat are snow geese. Last year, we were breasting some of the snow geese up in Saskatchewan, and they literally had veins of fat in the meat. It was almost like wagyu snow goose.

Ramsey Russell: I hear a lot of people that don’t like to eat snow geese and I for some reason, especially the fall and spring birds up in the upper flyway, especially, I love snow geese. I think in the fall, they’re one of my favorite birds on the prairie to eat are snow geese. Last year, we were breasting some of the snow geese up in Saskatchewan, and they literally had veins of fat in the meat. It was almost like wagyu snow goose. It was so much fat up inside those meat, and it was absolutely tender and delicious, and I just can’t judge a book by its cover. But some people aren’t excited for eating sea ducks, and I’m glad to find meet somebody that says, oh, here’s how we cook them, we like them, because you already said, you’re out there putting food on the table.

Jen Barton: Yeah.

From Hunters to Wildlife Photographer

There’s always going to be a struggle between the two options, but a lot of times, if I have to choose between my shotgun or my camera, it’ll depend on the lighting. 

Ramsey Russell: The transition. How far along was it, Jen, that you transitioned from the duck hunting to the photography? We talked about how you got into photography, your husband gave you that camera for Christmas, but how easy a transition was, because the better hunter you are, the better wildlife photographer you are.

Jen Barton: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: One of the parallels has got to be something, I think, taking a picture of a wild, live duck versus holding one that you’ve shot, there’s a lot of parallel in that, different though it maybe.

Jen Barton: Yeah. They really kind of evolved together. It was after that first season, I started taking pictures as a way to stay out in the marsh. I liked being outside of the city, and it was good to have alone time that I could focus on things. And so, I think I’m a better hunter because of the things that I pushed myself to learn and to try to get better pictures. And it definitely helped with my duck id, I could identify a coot better. If you just sit there and watch birds all day, and then you can look at your camera and say, oh, yeah, that actually was what I thought it was, or not, you get that confirmation right there. Instead of having to shoot it and find out in your hands, you can just look at your camera and get better at bird id.

Ramsey Russell: Do you ever bring your camera while you’re duck hunting?

Jen Barton: Always.

Ramsey Russell: I mean, I’ve tried that in the past because back in the days, I had a big camera with the big white lenses and pushed myself to take photography that I could get by with preceding social media just for the website type stuff. And it was very difficult sitting anywhere in the world with a shotgun in one hand and a camera in the other, which do I use? I could think of a lot of examples that I’m sitting there and see the ducks approaching and I’m going back and forth on, do I want to shoot them or do I want to take a picture of them? It was difficult. It’s always easier going to a park or outside the season with a camera than it is during hunting season, when I could also be suit my shotgun. How do you choose which one to do that day or that play?

Jen Barton: There’s always going to be a struggle between the two options, but a lot of times, if I have to choose between my shotgun or my camera, it’ll depend on the lighting. And so, if it’s really super dark, right at shoot light, I’ll shoot. But once the sun comes up and once, the light is soft and perfect and just how I want it, I’ll put the gun away and I’ll take out the camera, and I’ll take pictures of the birds or my friends. And then once the light gets super harsh, then, I’ll pick back up my gun and start hunting again. But whenever I try to do both at the same time, I fail at both at the same time. So I have to make a conscious decision, one or the other, and for how long? The only time that I can do both is whenever I’m focusing on the dog. And so I’ll have a little short lens in my blind bag, and I’ll shoot some birds, and the dog will go out and get them, and that’s when I’ll take out my camera. I’m not focused on shooting more ducks for the dog because I want her to have successful retrieves, and I focus on getting pictures of her. So I was at a hunt test this past weekend, and they had a photographer, and I was laughing, and I was like, oh, well, my dog, I’ve inadvertently trained her to come towards the camera whenever she gets a retrieve because I’m always looking at her with a camera. So hopefully she’ll come to me instead of the camera guy. But she did. She came to me and she was great, but I was like, oh, all the things that we accidentally teach our dogs.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, yeah, I swing a mean iPhone these days. I cannot remember the last time I traveled with a big format camera and lenses and all that good stuff. And I focus a lot more on the hunting than I do, but I do, I use, I’m an iPhone photographer anymore, and I’m surprised that something like an iPhone can take such great pictures. In fact, I bought the last one because they upgraded the camera package, so I can do a little bit more with it. But it’s very difficult to manage. Talk about the lighting, and it really is all about those little slivers of time that the lighting is good early in the morning and late in the afternoon. And I like, a lot of your pictures are of flying birds. And to me, that’s where the magic is. A bird is beautiful sitting on the water a lot of times, especially when they’re doing something. But, gosh, it’s when they fly and their wings are stretched out and you can see those colors and you can see the motion and see the color in their wings, to me, that’s the magic of waterfowl and it’s taking pictures of flying ducks. But it’s really just a brief window, because if they’re up high flying, the sun’s got to be equal or beneath them, else it’s just everything’s in shadow. And if they’re on the water, you get by to get a little bit longer window, but that’s tough. You aren’t one of those people that climbs out in, like, these blinds and swims out in the water with the camera, are you?

Jen Barton: No, but if I had one, I totally would. But no. I’ve looked into how to make one of those, and it’s a little nerve wracking for me if I made one to strap my camera to this floating thing, I don’t know if I could do it.

Ramsey Russell: I would recommend insurance if you do. I’ve got a friend from Mississippi. He’s been doing it since slide film days, and he’s lost a lot of cameras, but he’s gotten a lot of full frame photos of birds that never even knew he was there doing that kind of stuff. And it’s always, no matter how big your lens is, you want to be closer.

Jen Barton: Yeah. One of the young photographers that message me on, like, tips, that’s what I tell them. Like, you got to get better at your hide.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Jen Barton: Like, nothing will replace being close.

Mastering Wind, Decoy Placement, and Concealment

When the spring birds were coming through Mississippi at camp at the time and going out and using a lot of the same – got to get the wind right, got to get the decoys right, got to get all this stuff right, got to be hidden, which I was just taking a mar seat and getting way back in the shadows up in the trees and the bushes.

Ramsey Russell: It’s hard to do. I can remember one spring in particular I committed myself to learning, or learning better, how to take pictures of flying waterfowl. It’s very difficult because they don’t move in slow motion, they’re moving quickly, and the light’s got to be right, that’s when I try to start figuring this out. But I just got to tell you, going out there after the season, we had a – when the spring birds were coming through Mississippi at camp at the time and going out and using a lot of the same – got to get the wind right, got to get the decoys right, got to get all this stuff right, got to be hidden, which I was just taking a mar seat and getting way back in the shadows up in the trees and the bushes. I wasn’t building a blind and then just being still and letting the ducks work, calling sparingly and letting them do their thing until they got in the right position on the right swing. But I learned so much about ducks and about photography and doing all that. And it was so interesting to me, I’ll never forget one particular pintail, a little flock of pintails and this beautiful Drake. And they knew I was there, Jen. I mean, you could see by the way they would react. How could they not look down and see that massive piece of shiny glass pointing at them? They knew something was there, but the gun wasn’t going off. And even though you could see through their behavior, they were nervous, they weren’t fearful. You know what I’m saying? They eventually settled in and got comfortable with whatever that was, it wasn’t messing with them and started coming in and lighting and getting close enough to take some pictures. And I just found so much joy watching those ducks through the lens. I won’t say as much joy as looking at them over the top of a shotgun, but I did find an immense amount of joy watching those birds and sitting there waiting on them to get closer, swim closer, do something, watching their behavior that you just don’t see when you’re sitting in a duck blind with a loaded shotgun and a quivering retriever. You don’t get to see that as closely as you do when you’re just sitting quietly by yourself in a blind with a camera.

Jen Barton: Yeah.

Best Waterfowl Photographs

Gosh, probably one of my favorite photos is just the first cinnamon teal that I shot for our curly coated retriever, and she was all business. 

Ramsey Russell: What are some of your favorite photos you’ve taken?

Jen Barton: Gosh, probably one of my favorite photos is just the first cinnamon teal that I shot for our curly coated retriever, and she was all business. The weather was bad that day, and it fell pretty far. And I sent her, and she never looked back. And she went out there and got it. It was still a little lively, and I caught some pictures of her bringing it back, and the fire in her eyes and the fierceness, it gave me chills when I looked at those pictures later. And that was the picture that California Waterfowl used for their winter magazine.

Ramsey Russell: I’ve seen that photo. Yeah, I have seen that photo.

Jen Barton: And the fun part about taking photos during a hunt is it really takes you back to remember all those little tiny details. Seeing a picture, I can remember the weather and where the bird fell and the decoys that day and who I was with and the birds that I already had on my strap and how excited I was to finally get a cinnamon teal for her. So that one means a lot. Other pictures that mean a lot are ones that I’ve taken of my friends and their kids on some of their first duck hunts, try to capture that feeling of excitement that they get for shooting their first duck with a single shot 4-10. So those are really special. And then last spring, like, if we’re just focusing on ducks, I had a day in southern California where I went and sat all day, and I was filling up memory card after memory card of blue wings and cinnamons that were just absolutely dive bombing in front of me. And I was sitting there, and I couldn’t help but laugh. And the amount of joy that I got from that day, taking pictures of those ducks, just perfect light and perfectly plumed ducks, and I could not have asked them to come in better and model more. That was very fun.

Ramsey Russell: Was there an AHA moment, an AHA photo in your career? I’m not a full plume photo. I’m not a photographer. But playing around with it some back in the day, it was just thousands upon thousands of frames taken, and then you found that one. And I can think of 2 or 3 out of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe, of shutter exposures that were like, wow, I’m proud. I got real lucky on this one. But was there a moment, a picture that you can remember that when you looked at it and you blew it up on the screen, you go, okay, now I know what I’m doing, and it just sent you off in a different orbit.

Jen Barton: Yeah, there was a preening cinnamon teal, and the pond had a lot of greenery in it, a lot of greenery on the edges of the pond. And that duck, he knew I was there, and he didn’t care, he was comfortable, he was hanging out, and it was very lightly misting, just this really subtle rain and it was beating up on all of his feathers while he was praying. And I got this picture of him with his head all arched back, messing with the feathers in his wing. And that was the picture where I was like, oh, my gosh, like this is the best picture I’ve ever taken. And I donated a framed picture of that one to the California Waterfowl dinner that year, and they auctioned it off. But that one I was really proud of and knew that I wanted to keep making pictures like that.

Ramsey Russell: Do you find that some of those not dark days, not cloudy days, or raining days, but like a bright haze day, are they better than a clear day? My friend Lee Kjos is an epic photographer. He loves cloudy days, that’s where he makes his magic. Do you find that it’s better or easier? I mean, moody? Oh, his photos are very moody. But at the same time, when you got that bright light, just a clear sun, and it starts getting off, it’s just too bright, too harsh. But sometimes it’s almost like that, those clouds that you all might get up in your neck of the woods or act as a filter and really saturate those colors. When you were sitting there describing that cinnamon teal, I’m thinking, man, that maroon must have just been super saturated, those red eyes must have been just super saturated red in that kind of lighting.

Jen Barton: Yeah, it depends on what I’m going for. Like I recently posted a picture of some cinnamons that were in a courtship flight. And the sun was real clear and bright that day and I wanted that shine, that iridescence of their feathers. I wanted it to be super bright. And I drove like 7 hours that day for that little tiny window of time that I got pictures, but that’s what I wanted for that day. But if I have the dogs or if I’m doing something closer, having that moody feeling, having more of a filtered light is super helpful, but it kind of depends on what you want the picture to feel like what you’re going for.

Ramsey Russell: You were saying earlier, being a duck hunter and around duck hunters with a camera, on the days you say I’m going to shoot with a camera instead of a gun, there’s no choice there. But it’s an enviable position. I think of two of my favorite all time photos hanging somewhere in my little living space, don’t involve ducks at all, or straps of ducks or dead ducks. There’s a couple of accounts I follow, friends of mine, Wade Shoemaker took a picture one time. We were in a blind and you never know where his camera’s point. I mean, you’re just all kind of hunting and as you’re hunting and socializing with your friends, you forget that somebody’s sitting there with a camera. And he sent me a picture of my sons and I sharing a moment in the blind, just oblivious, forgetting about the camera, forgetting about the duck, just sitting there talking and visiting. And Ed Wall sent a picture of me and my middle child, youngest son had come back for a break from the US marines, kind of in between boot camp and whatever came next, and shared a duck hunt in Arkansas and it was just a picture candid photo, both of these are candid photos taken when you drop your guard and you’re just being human and sharing a time with the people that mean the most to you. And those are my two favorite all time duck hunting photos. Not a dead duck in the picture, it’s just me and my two favorite people sharing a moment. And we were blessed to have a couple of photographers there that appreciated the moment and snapped a frame. And I love those human moments.

Capturing the Moment

Jen Barton: Yeah. Those are sometimes the hardest one to capture, because a lot of people will tense up if they sense that the cameras.

Ramsey Russell: I mean, if the camera’s pointing your way, you pose, man, you got your good side facing, and you’re holding it just right. Yeah, we all pose, but it’s those candid moments when nobody’s aware that there’s a camera that you really capture the essence of that moment. And that’s very difficult to do, even still. First you got to see it, and then you got to have the camera ready and everything, and pull it off without them turning around and grinning and posing and holding the thumbs up, you lose that moment.

Jen Barton: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And the retrieving photos are some of my favorite also. Because these animals, whether they’re 7 years old, when they find their purpose in life or they’re trained from the – they’re whelped and they just get immediately into it. They’ve got a purpose. And these retrievers, they’ve got such a fire in them for what they do. Every dog I’ve ever owned, some are better than others, but they know their job, and they’re so passionate about what they do. I wish I could approach everything in life as passionately as Char dog approaches retrieving that next duck. I wish I had that fire and that intensity for everything I have to do in a day that she does on just every single mark. And to capture that, get the eyes focused, that’s a big one. Or the tail wagon or the water droplets coming off of the tail. It’s just those little details. When you’re taking pictures of ducks, like you said, you went out to take a picture of that cinnamon teal, and you had just this idea about the colors that you wanted and I’m guessing a little bit of the composition. When you’re taking a picture of your dog coming in with that cinnamon teal or that cinnamon teal sitting on the water, are you just burning frames, or are you waiting for just that moment and hopefully in a burst of fractionalized thousands of a seconds, you capture it. Is it part luck, part skill?

Jen Barton: Can it be a combination?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I’d rather be lucky than good, I can tell you that. That’s the only way I get through life.

Jen Barton: Yeah. My camera takes really large files. It’s like 61 megapixels for the one that I use for the close up shots. And so, I don’t have the luxury of just burning through a bunch of shots because the camera sometimes will lag and not be able to keep up. So for, the dog coming in, I’ll wait until I get her where I want it to be, and sometimes I’ll get out of my barrel and I’ll get to where I have the light a certain way to try to lure her towards me for a better shot. And then with the flying shots, I still have to be, I’ll shoot a smaller megapixel file for the flying shots, but I still try to be cognizant where you’re just not, like, the whole time. I’ll wait for them to get close and then wait for the focus to lock in and start tracking and then fire off some frames and then be looking for the next duck that might be coming in. Because it always happens where you get one that’s coming in, you’re like, oh, yeah, you’re following this one. And then it just, like, sits down or doesn’t do anything super interesting, and it never fails. There’s like a flock right behind him that you just didn’t see because you were watching this single coming in to land. So he’s trying to be ready for the next one. So it’s a combination of picking wind to burst for those really fast flying shots or picking when to start taking shots with the dog coming in where the light is and things like that. And the water, I like the splashes with her. So a lot of times, whenever she gets closer and the water is a little bit more shallow, you get some more splashing. It’s more impressive.

Ramsey Russell: What kind of lenses do you use?

Jen Barton: I use Sony. I’ve got the 200 to 600 millimeter, and I would like to get a prime one day, but they’re too expensive for a hobbyist like me. And then for my dog shots, I use the 24 to 70 Sony that I really like.

Ramsey Russell: But I can see where if I were going to send my dog on a 150, 200 yard retrieve having that zoom 200 to 600 would be a huge asset, I can capture coming and going. I mean, yeah, I can get a lot of different range out of that.

Jen Barton: That one I usually save for birds, so I’ll take it whenever I go sea duck hunting with my friend Melinda, I’ll take it and get good pictures of the sea ducks landing in the decoys or flying or if we’ve got the layouts out, I’ll take pictures from the tender boat at the layouts and the ducks coming in. That’s where that is really helpful. But I usually don’t take it, like, when I’m hunting with the dog, because it’s huge. Yeah, I’ll just take the little lens. I would eventually like to get the 70 to 200, I think that would be a good compromise for both worlds. And get some of those longer retrieve shots, because I’ve tried to get them with, like, the 24 to 70, and I’ve tried to crop them down, but then you lose so much detail, like, oh, she dove under the water for this one, it would have been really nice to have that close up picture of her pulling that wigeon out, but one day I’ll get more toys.

Best Ducks to Photograph 

My favorite to take pictures of would probably be pintail, because they are so elegant.

Ramsey Russell: What is your favorite duck to hunt? And what is your favorite duck species to take a picture of, or do you have one?

Jen Barton: My favorite to take pictures of would probably be pintail, because they are so elegant.

Ramsey Russell: Kind of the state duck of California, too.

Jen Barton: Yeah, they are always way up there. If there’s a pintail, somewhere where I’m taking pictures, I’m going to gravitate towards it. Cinnamon teal are a very close second.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Jen Barton: Sometimes they’ll switch between number one and number two, but pintail and cinnamon are always my favorites. And then to hunt, I very much enjoy cinnamon teal.

Ramsey Russell: Really? I would have bet green winged teal.

Jen Barton: Green wings are very good to eat, and they’re super fun. Having a big fly flock of green wings circle you and dive in is thrilling. But to see one of those red ducks come in.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, yeah.

Jen Barton: And dive in all reckless, that’s really cool. And I appreciate, how lucky we are to have so many of them around here.

Ramsey Russell: You all do have a lot.

Jen Barton: They’re so beautiful when you get them in your hand. I don’t know that there’s anything prettier than a cinnamon teal in my book.

Ramsey Russell: California has a lot of different habitats to duck hunt, we talked about that. You hunt a lot of different ones. Do you have a favorite habitat type to hunt or a favorite habitat type to take pictures in?

Jen Barton: I like the natural marsh.

Ramsey Russell: I do, too.

Jen Barton: I think it lends the most to pictures as well. I like having that depth and the interest in the background for pictures. I’ve been lucky enough to hunt up in the butte sink in natural marsh a few times.

Ramsey Russell: That’s an amazing country.

Jen Barton: Yeah. And the way that the mallards come in, up there is pretty incredible. If I could do that all the time, that would be great. But even just going to, like, the state and federal refuges, especially in the grasslands, they have a lot of different habitat options on the refuge. You can kind of choose your own adventure that day for how you want to hunt and where you want to hunt. And that’s always really fun, going to the refuge and seeing something a little bit different and getting to hunt different kinds of birds.

Ramsey Russell: You’ve mentioned California Waterfowl Association several times, you must be very active in that organization.

Jen Barton: I’m a life member. I donate to various dinners when people reach out. Donated a dog photo shoot to one of the recent ones for them to auction off. They were very helpful in access and education for a new hunter in California. There was a property in southern California where I would go and hunt by myself with the yellow lab, Ruger. That’s where I shot my first duck on a solo hunt was at Goose Lake, and it was a safe space that I knew I wouldn’t have to fight with people, like in free roam on a refuge, I could go, and I knew exactly where the blind was, and there were maps and signs, and they even had decoys in the blind where I didn’t have to haul out all my own decoys. And so it was extremely accessible for a new hunter to get their feet wet.

Ramsey Russell: That’s a heck of an outreach program in today and age. That is incredible.

Jen Barton: Yeah, because otherwise it would have been going to the refuge, hauling all my own stuff, having to either pick a blind or go to free roam and try to muscle out a spot in the Tules. So it was just a really a good transition from absolute newbie to a novice beginner and being able to just go and figure it out and not be super worried that I was in the wrong spot.

Ramsey Russell: I think that California Waterfowl association is a model example of regional conservation in an uphill battle in a state that has got a burgeoning human population, a very progressive, city oriented political base, and yet a lot of habitat loss over the years, and yet they make gains, and they work in so many different areas in terms of waterfowl conservation, habitat conservation. I mean, everything from Klamath to a million wood ducks produced to this new hunter outreach to where someone like yourself can sink her teeth into the sport of duck hunting without being overwhelmed by just like you say, muscle into a spot in the Tules in public land. I was hunting with my buddy John Wills, he had a draw for public land, I can’t remember where we were hunting. And as we were pulling up, I mean, from a mile away in California, it looked like a kid rock concert going on. I go, what is that over there? Some kind of factory? He goes, that’s the sweat line. That’s where we’re going. And for such a friendly and outgoing guy, we talked incessantly from daylight to dark, and we go through, and we’re just chit chatting, we get to the parking place, and he opens the door and disappears into the dark. Not goodbye, kiss my ass, nothing. He’s just gone. He’s running. And then his buddy pulls up, and we bring the decoys out, because John’s been running to muscle into the Tules, and it was a crowd out there, but it was amazing to me just how good the duck hunting was for so many people. And some of the people we talked to, we got in it before dawn because he had the draw. But some of the people waited in line until 02:00 or 03:00 in the afternoon, and it was their turn to go in. And still they went in and shot some ducks. That’s just incredible to me. It speaks a lot about California, but it says a lot to – I was just thinking about your story about California Waterfowl Association, I think it’s just an amazing organization that really gets a lot done in their own backyard. And all I can think, every time I think about CWA is, what if every state had a waterfowl organization like that, putting their time and their money and concentrating it via politics and everything else into Waterfowl Habitat Conservation? It’d be a whole different United States of America.

Jen Barton: Yeah, I’m very happy that we have them available to us here.

The Best Hunting Partners

Tell me about your hunting dog now. You all have got another hunting breed.

Ramsey Russell: What’s old Ruger up to these days? He’s 14 years old, which is approaching dinosaur age for a working breed. Is he in retirement now?

Jen Barton: Oh, yeah, he is very much in retirement. He’s getting by. He has degenerative myelopathy, and so he has excellent hips, excellent elbows, he doesn’t have arthritis, really, to speak of, but his spinal cord is kind of given out on him, so he’s losing a lot of the nerve function, his tail kind of dangles.

Ramsey Russell: Is he a big dog? Is he big?

Jen Barton: Yeah, he’s a big lab.

Ramsey Russell: Okay.

Jen Barton: But he’s lost a lot of the strength in his back legs, so he gets helped up and down the stairs, and he has a little harness that helps me chuck him into the car like a bale of hay. But he’s happy. He’s happy as can be. He just wants to be with people and sleep on the couch all day, have his food, and he’s good to go.

Ramsey Russell: That’s a good life for an old lab. Tell me about your hunting dog now. You all have got another hunting breed. Let’s talk about a little bit about what you all hunt with now.

Jen Barton: Yeah. We have a curly coated retriever. The curly coats are the oldest retriever breed, and they came from England.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Jen Barton: Yeah. They’re called the poacher’s dog. They would be used by the games keepers and sometimes the poachers to go and clean up all the leftover birds after a hunt because they have excellent noses and they’re very quiet and calm and very biddable, very trainable. Our girl, she’s very smart and very birdy. Her nose has impressed me multiple times this past season, diving into Tule’s and pulling out very lively ducks. And we were interested in that breed because of how raucous my Labrador was and the blind and all the sounds he would make. And so, we got her because she’s calmer, she’s got a really good off switch, but still very good hunting partner.

Ramsey Russell: Jen. I had to look it up. A curly coat retriever, and you say it’s one of the oldest hunting breeds, or waterfowl hunting breeds. And I had to look it up, and the picture I’m looking at, it looks like Labrador retrievers with longer hair, almost like, this one’s wearing Jheri curl. I mean, he’s got a very dense coat. Like, more dense than a Chesapeake bay. But they look to me a lot like a Labrador retriever. I wonder if there’s any – if this breed somehow, it’s got to be related somehow down the lineage to a Labrador retriever. Got to be.

Jen Barton: Maybe, not for sure.

Ramsey Russell: I bet they’re durable. How much does she weigh?

Jen Barton: She’s probably about 70lbs right now.

Ramsey Russell: A big retriever.

Jen Barton: Yeah. And they can be bigger. Her breeder has a male that’s a solid 90, and he just looks like a bear.

Ramsey Russell: And you bought it out of Europe?

Jen Barton: Oh, no, we got ours out of Sacramento.

Ramsey Russell: Okay.

Jen Barton: But they originated in Europe. There’s a lot of curly coats in Finland and Norway.

Ramsey Russell: What is her name? What is your curly coat retriever’s name now?

Jen Barton: Vesta is her call name.

Ramsey Russell: Vesta. It didn’t take her 7 years to figure out what her life purpose was, because now you all are experienced duck hunters, and you chose this animal. Did you all train her yourself?

Jen Barton: I did a lot of the early stuff myself, but I did not want to force train her myself, so I sent her off for that. I’ve always had male dogs, and I was worried that, her being a female, she would hold a grudge. I was like, I can’t.

Ramsey Russell: They do that.

Jen Barton: And so I sent her off to be force fetch trained. And apparently, she was very difficult, she’s stubborn, the trainer said, she’s not a lab. And I have to keep reminding myself that she is not a lab. But she did get force fetch trained. She now knows how to handle, and she’s working on her junior hunter title right now. But we had to put that on hold because she went in the heat.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, yeah, you were telling me that before we recorded.

Jen Barton: Just try to make plans, and then, they’ll laugh at you.

Ramsey Russell: What next for Jen Barton? What next for you and Vesta and Full Plume Photo? What’s next, Jen?

Jen Barton: It’s hard to say. I try very hard to make sure that it’s not a business. So we’re still going to be out there having fun, shooting birds, and I’ll keep taking pictures of her. I would like to get her senior hunt test titles done. Eventually, we’ll probably end up breeding her and have little Vestas running around taking over California. But I’ll still keep sharing photos of the times that I spend in the marsh and the joy that I find there. And it makes me happy that other people enjoy seeing those photos as well.

Ramsey Russell: Will you please tell everybody how they can get and connect with you in social media.

Jen Barton: I’m pretty much only on Instagram. Full Plume Photo if you have questions, feel free to reach out via messenger. I get a lot of messages about dogs like my poodle, as people call her, and just camera equipment and different things like that. But I always like chatting with people about ducks.

Ramsey Russell: Thank you so much. I’ve enjoyed our conversation today. And folks, thank you all for listening to this episode of Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast you’ve been listening to Jen Barton, Full Plume Photo check her out on Instagram. Reach out to her if you’ve got any questions. We’ll see you next time.