OK- Bird Photography

Beware! The following is a long, opinionated, and possibly blatantly wrong series of thoughts on the art of bird photography.

Arthur Morris. There you go. That name says a lot about the current state of bird photography. Artie, as he calls himself, is an extremely talented photographer who has made his reputation with his own “brand” of imagery. His trademark is close shots, often portraiture, of wild birds in low angle, over the shoulder light. Very sharp with clean even backgrounds. It is stylish and simple. It WAS a distinctive look. I emphasize the word WAS because Artie’s work has become so synonymous with good bird photography that it seems every photographer shooting birds is doing their damnedest to imitate his style. Close. Sharp. Clean. As a result (and this is where my opinion rears its ugly head) run of the mill bird photography has become very, very, boring. The birds are beautiful and photographed in nice light they are usually in profile (ideally with the head turned 15 degrees toward the camera). The images are technically perfect and they all look exactly the same.

This striving for the “ideal” shot has led to a remarkable reliance on Photoshop. The program is used to clone out distracting elements (even very minor ones), to clean up non-uniform backgrounds, to remove unwanted parts of the image (other birds, evidence of humans, etc.), and even, in the more extreme cases, to replace parts of the bird that are not shown in ideal conditions with parts from other images. Thus it is possible to find shots of birds where a closed eye has been replaced by an open eye from the next photo in the series. A clipped wing may be replaced with one copied from the opposite side, feathers re-arranged, dirt removed from bills, feet placed in more aesthetically pleasing positions… WHERE DOES IT STOP?

At what point have we stopped portraying nature as it is and turned it into what we want it to be? I don’t think this is just a philosophical question. Nature photography has been criticized in the past for portraying nature as an ideal and not as reality. The late, great Galen Rowell received a scathing critique from an art critic who said that he was misleading the public through use of “colored filters” to believe that nature was a bright and colorful place when in fact it was mostly, brown, green, and gray. That critic was obviously wrong and I pity them for having spent so little time outside not to have seen the colors the world can produce. But if Galen’s true to life images could give that impression, what would that critic say about the kind of manipulations now common in bird photography?

But Dave, you say, we are talking about art not reality. In which case I say “touché…BUT…” photography is different. I’m sorry, but it just is. People, the viewing public, look at photography very differently from other forms of art. People BELIEVE photography in a way they don’t with other art forms. And when it comes to nature photography, well, I think nature should be appreciated in all its diverse forms, and our images should represent this, not just showing all the rare moments when our avian subjects appear in perfect light with clean backgrounds with their bills pointing exactly 15 degrees off of perpendicular. OK that was an off-subject tangent. My point is not that bird photography shouldn’t be viewed as art, but rather that bird photography shouldn’t all look the same.

The strange part is that I think many bird photographers recognize this in their gut. Because when the rare image appears on the Bird Photographer’s Network that has truly broken away from the formula like this one HERE. It gets rave reviews. Others, that I think are rather stunning with hidden textures and surprises like this one HERE, get notably mixed reviews because, in the eyes of many photographers, the image is close enough to being “correct” that it is wrong.

Now, after I wrote all this, I must acknowledge that I do love a good clean bird photo. These shots are easy to appreciate, and given the right situation and equipment are technically easy to execute. They illustrate the written word very well, but they are rarely memorable. The simple, the clean and sharp, may be the bread and butter of the wildlife photographer, but it should never be the only images made. As photographers we must remember to expand our vision beyond the normal. It is outside of the norm where we will find the truly exceptional.

Rant over.