A Northern Flicker And The Kindness Of A Stranger

In early 2008 I was a frustrated novice photographer. I had recently invested heavily in an expensive “bird lens” and switched over from shooting in JPEG to RAW all in an effort to get high quality shots but it just wasn’t happening. My images were not as sharp as they should be and I couldn’t figure out why.

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A Tale OF A Barn Owl Tail

I learned something this morning.  It will likely seem inconsequential to others but it was sort of a big deal for me.    1/3200, f/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f/4, natural light, not baited, set up or called in A few minutes ago, while processing this recent Barn Owl image, I was once again struck by how short and stubby the square tail of this species is, especially when compared to the length of the wings.  And then some faint memory from long ago popped into my head. Bingo!  Now it all made sense.      1/320, f/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in By coincidence, exactly 5 years ago today I posted this image to an online nature photography critique forum (Nature Photographers Network or NPN).  At the time I was just becoming serious about my bird photography and I took the critiques I got on that forum to heart – trying to learn from my mistakes and improve my skills. In the version of the photo I submitted to NPN I didn’t recognize the “structure” marked with the red arrow as  being part of the bird so I had cropped the image in such a manner that I “clipped” the tip of that structure.  The critiques I got from the members of the forum “dinged” me for it, and rightfully so.  They all said that I had clipped the tail and in my inexperience I assumed they were right and went on with my life.  But I felt pretty silly…

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Award Winning Image

Maybe it’s a little tacky of me to toot my own horn but I figured that some of my readers might be interested in this and wouldn’t find out any other way. Yesterday Nature Photographers Network announced the 2011 winners of their annual Editor’s Pick Awards and one of my images won first place in the Avian category.   I’ll provide several links below for those who may be interested in seeing my winning photograph and those of the other winners.  For those who are unfamiliar with Nature Photographers Network (NPN) it is primarily a nature photography critique site which will explain the critiques below the photos.  My image.  Be sure to click the “view larger photo” option to see the photo in much better detail.  The front page of the NPN Online Magazine, which includes a slide show presentation of the First Place winning images in each of the 9 different categories.  Be sure to check them out (hold your cursor over the image to temporarily stop the slide show) as there are some wonderful nature photographs in the presentation. The first, second and third place winning images in each of the nine categories, including the critiques given on each photograph. Ron

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