For some years now, my preferred means of discovery has been the camera. If I must go anywhere without a camera, it feels to me that I have gone out into the world missing an aspect of sight. I think the camera helps me see and celebrate what I most love.

The people I love tolerate as best they can my incessant need to notice them with my camera. (But I'm not showing you pictures of them right now.) Members of a whole species I have a passion for these days, great blue herons, have demonstrated a surprising tolerance for me, too. Theirs are the portraits I'm showing.

My current body of work is a collection of photographs of particular birds I visit as often as I can. I go to their places. All the pictures are on their terms in that they continue to do, most of the time, what they were going to do anyway.

Sometimes I photograph a heron when he or she notices me and seems to be considering what to do about the fact of my presence. I'm a little sorry for those moments, but I admit, I'm also thrilled. The great blue herons that I photograph are wild, and we, the herons and I, are not friends. But by whatever system these herons assess their situation, I seem not to be dangerous, and so they stay a while, and I get my photographs of them, these particular instances of a beautiful, awkward, elusive, predatory, delicate, elegant, primitive, alert, adaptable, and surprising nature.

Kathleen Atkins

Seattle, 2008