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Laurie Dirkx Captures Wildlife in Photographs

Laurie Dirkx
Photographer Laurie Dirkx on the shore of Lake Ontario. Photo by Cassie Clement.

Laurie Dirkx grew up a few minutes’ drive from the city of Rochester, New York, and has always been drawn to the quiet of the natural world and to animals – both wild and domestic. A childhood spent wandering the woods behind her house and tagging along with her father on bird banding outings inspired her to pursue wildlife photography. She now lives in Ontario, New York, a few miles from Lake Ontario and close to where she grew up. Through her photographs, she has captured elk and snowy owls, rattlesnakes and red foxes – always careful to not disturb her subjects in their habitat.

I was always outside as a child. My mother couldn’t keep me in. After breakfast, I’d go out and be out all day with my dog, hiking the land surrounding my home. I grew up in Penfield, New York, and it was natural surroundings in all directions, pretty much still is. Outside of my backyard was Irondequoit Bay to the north and outside of my front yard was Ellison Park to the south. Directly out of my backyard was a nice steep ravine. No sooner were you down in the valley, and it went right upright again on the other side. I’d go fossil hunting in creek beds, climb steep clay banks to test how high I could get before needing to turn back, play sandlot ball with the other neighborhood kids, among countless other outdoor adventures.

When I was 8 years old, I began riding horses. I couldn’t be at the barn enough. I never knew anyone who owned a horse. There were no horses by me. I was not exposed to any horses. But by age 6, it was horses-horses-horses. And finally, when I was 8, to hush me up, my mother set me up at a riding stable. And I am still involved with horses. My second Arabian mare, Khallera, is 27 years old now. I bought her when she was an 18-month-old filly. We’ve been together all these years.

Foxes
Laurie photographed this male red fox and one of its kits in Walworth, New York.

And I’ve always had dogs. I can’t breathe without a dog by my side. My first dog was a purebred mutt. She was amazing. I bury a part of myself every time I bury a dog. Everybody says they have the best dog – well, none of us are wrong. For people who feel so deeply about them, every dog is a therapy dog. I’ve had German shepherds for years, after adopting a rescue shepherd.

My dad had a hunting camp in Adirondack State Park, and that’s where I fell in love with climbing mountains. By age 10, I no longer wore footwear when climbing, and my father honored this and would tie my boots to his pack, in case the time came that I needed them on the mountain. I still hike barefoot, but I always pack shoes. If I can feel the mountain, I stay safe. I love being able to feel every bit of terrain. I can get a foothold. I’ve never liked shoes. I’ve just always been barefoot. When I started playing ball, I was playing barefoot, as a young girl – age 8 or 9. There was no rule then that you had to wear shoes to play.

My dad, Robert McKinney, worked as a chemical engineer, but he was also a renowned bird bander. The banding laboratory at the Braddock Bay Bird Observatory here in Rochester is named after him. My father banded over 122,000 birds in his lifetime. Where we’re located on Lake Ontario is an incredible spring migration route, especially for warblers, saw-whet owls, and other boreal birds of prey species passing through as they return to their breeding territories. My father was so efficient at banding. He’d get the smaller birds out of the mist nets and into these little cloth bags, do the weighing, the wing measurements, blow on the chest to see how much fat is there so he could understand how healthy the birds are through these migration times. And, boom, the bird was banded and gone. And he would always say, “Have a good day,” when he released a bird after banding it.

Snowy owl
This snowy owl had just crossed Lake Ontario during an irruption year when Laurie photographed it on the Summerville Pier in Charlotte, New York.

My father and I used to band birds when it was just open fields, and he was able to secure that land to be forever wild. That’s a lot of what my dad did. He was the president of a 31-acre nature sanctuary nearby. Each Sunday found us there, year-round. The clubhouse was an old farmhouse that had an extensive natural history library and a taxidermy room as well. My sense of wide-eyed wonderment of our natural world was greatly nurtured there.

He was just wildly good at anything non-human. That was the greatest gift I think he could teach me – things that people would typically find scary or unusual, he could put a whole new connotation to it, where people would begin to see these things in a new way. And that is how I grew up. Dad had a particular way of explaining something that captivated you. It wasn’t a boring lecture. Everything had purpose. He would take you beyond what you were asking and present the bigger picture.

Rattlesnake
This male timber rattlesnake, which Laurie photographed in the Finger Lakes region of New York, is preparing to shed its skin, as indicated by its opaque eye.

In 1970, Dad picked up my brother and me on the last day of school, and we got in the car and we covered I think 40 states and got up into the Canadian Rockies. And Dad didn’t do any “tourist traps,” as he called them. He brought us to the most rugged, isolated areas. We’d get up on some of these high mountain roads where there were no guardrails, but we were looking out onto the mountains. You didn’t know whether to be terrified or in awe. That’s when Dad gave me my first Instamatic camera. I photographed the prairie dogs, Devil’s Tower, the Grand Canyon, all these things that captured my attention. I couldn’t get enough of it.

It wasn’t until I purchased my first filly, when I was 21 years old, in 1981, that I really started taking photographs again. I was working at the Kodak Elmgrove plant at the time, and it was good money, but I was inside of a factory. I quit Kodak to work at a stable. I’d gone to college for equine husbandry, which is pre-veterinary – anatomy, physiology. I’d already had a life of observing animals. I really was a natural at picking up on animal behavior and body language. I bought my first Arabian filly at 10 months of age, with the money I’d earned from Kodak, and I documented her growth into adulthood through photographs.

Then in 2008, there was a photography project called Capture Rochester, and I settled into photographing the natural world again. Every photo I submitted was of wildlife. In fact, I was almost embarrassed to submit the photo that ended up being published, because it was what you would expect to see – a perfect monarch on a purple coneflower. I thought, “Oh, that will never go anywhere, because that’s what people are used to seeing.” I am always striving to give people that other perspective, capture something that people aren’t used to seeing. I need to represent the wildlife that I see, what captivates me.

Elk
Among Laurie’s favorite wildlife to photograph these days are elk. She took this photograph of a bull elk in Hicks Run, Pennsylvania.

For me, capturing a photograph is always secondary to an animal’s welfare. Since the inception of social media, a monkey-see/monkey-do mentality has kicked in with many – like a photo notch on a belt that is needed in order to keep up with others. Too many times I have witnessed people who linger too long while an animal is aware of their presence, repeated visits to locations disturbing both the species and landowners, encroaching upon wildlife to get a closer photo, trespassing, using vocal recordings of a species to draw them in, illegal use of drones, human pressure during sensitive nesting or birthing times. Sadly, the list goes on. When afield, if I pick up on stressors being created by others also out there, I try and help them learn why unsuccessful photos will likely ensue, due to flushing the animal or forcing it to retreat. I help to teach what the animal is relaying through its body language, so that people can capture natural behavior images instead of ones showing the species ill-affected by human presence.

I’m self-taught as a photographer, relying on my own instinct. I’m not an expert – what I am is passionate, and that is the root of any success in my wildlife photography. I care about the subjects that I photograph. I don’t consider myself a naturalist compared to some of the people I admire for their knowledge. However, it is all the snippets of my experiences outdoors that culminate in the images that I produce. I don’t travel more than a four-hour drive away, which also happens to be the distance to my two favorite places: south to where the elk are, and north into the Adirondack Mountains. This puts every photo I take within close proximity to my home.

If there’s any inspiration to come from my photography, I hope it is for others to have a path of their own. In other words, if the image means something to you, it’s likely it will mean something to someone else. When you have that connection, that’s what brings out a good image. My connection is caring first, about the wildlife and their habitat. That is what helps me to achieve natural behavior images. As a photographer, I feel the best gear you can have is your heart and brain. And the best you can be is a good example.

Discussion *

Mar 22, 2024

What a beautiful, passionate article!  Laurie has followed her dreams and pursued her love of the natural world and animals, and documented this through photography. Truly inspiring story! Thank you for sharing with NF readers.  Marion Gray, Warren, Maine

Marion Gray

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