I’ve always believed that photography isn’t just about pressing the shutter; it’s about building a relationship with light, with the land, and with whatever living thing happens to cross your path. Sometimes that relationship is built in an instant. Sometimes, as I’ve learned with Pennsylvania’s wild turkeys, it’s more of a long game.

When most people think of turkeys, they picture the domestic bird on a holiday table. But the wild turkey of Pennsylvania is an entirely different creature—wary, cunning, and built for survival. They move with an uncanny mix of elegance and clumsiness, blending into the forest one second and exploding in a flurry of wings the next. As a photographer, that unpredictability is part of the draw.

My first turkey photograph came by accident. I was setting up for a misty morning landscape when a hen emerged from the treeline, her head darting back and forth with deliberate precision. She didn’t notice me at first, and I had just enough time to adjust my exposure before she froze, staring straight through me, and vanished into the brush. I got two frames, neither perfect, but those imperfect frames reminded me why I do this. A photograph doesn’t have to be flawless to be meaningful. It has to be honest.

Turkeys have a way of teaching you patience. They don’t perform for the camera. They don’t linger in golden light just because it’s “the shot.” If you want to capture their character, you have to slow down, sink into their world, and wait for them to accept your presence—or at least tolerate it. That’s one of my guiding ideals in photography: let the subject be itself. I’m not there to control or stage the scene. I’m there to witness. If the turkey decides to strut across a shaft of sunlight, that’s a gift. If it melts back into the shadows before I can lift the camera, that’s the story too.

Over the years, I’ve photographed turkeys in every season. Toms in full spring display, bronze feathers catching the morning light like hammered metal. Hens shepherding a line of downy poults through autumn leaves. Wary flocks scratching for food on a January hillside. Each image is less about the bird itself and more about the moment it lives in—the mood of the light, the texture of the air, the way the forest holds its breath when wildlife passes through.

In the end, photographing wild turkeys has reminded me that the camera is a bridge, not a trophy rack. The goal isn’t to collect shots but to connect—to the animal, to the place, to the fleeting instant when it all comes together.

Those moments, whether caught on film or just in memory, are what keep me walking the ridges and valleys of Pennsylvania, lens at the ready, always listening for the soft rustle of feathers in the undergrowth.