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<\/p>\nI confine myself to local nature photography.<\/p>\n
As I look around the websites of nature photographers, I detect a pattern: purchase my picture. Now, I am not suggesting that this is the only, or even primary, reason the pictures were taken. But, this seems to be a major reason that nature pictures are posted on personal sites: look at my work and buy. Well fine, and why not?<\/p>\n
Yet, that is not the reason—the monetization\u00a0of my delights—that I take pictures. I take pictures so as to better understand my surroundings. Consider the following (which will make no sense at all to those who view everything as a commodity to be sold).<\/p>\n
Last Sunday, I went for a walk in a marsh. During that time I observed (what I then believed were) sparrows. Certainly, they looked like sparrows. The only challenge I faced was to decide just which of the various types of sparrows they were out of the dozen or so possibilities.<\/p>\n
Yet, I took pictures and it was those pictures that chastened my assessment—not the original observation—it was the uncompromising pictures. After about five hours of on-again, off-again checking, I learned that these were not sparrows at all, but a lookalike: a female Red-winged Blackbird.<\/p>\n
The pictures were grounded in a reality that my more casual observations failed to achieve.<\/p>\n
Some female Red-winged Blackbirds visit the marshlands of Kokanee Creek Park.
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I confine myself to local nature photography. As I look around the websites of nature photographers, I detect a pattern: purchase my picture. Now, I am not suggesting that this is the only, or even primary, reason the pictures were … Continue reading