I have been a photographer for most of my life and throughout my 46 years or so of photography, my style has changed many times. When I first got heavily into bird photography about 14 years ago, the trend in North America was towards shooting birds as big as possible in the frame and I followed that trend taking at least 100,000 birds that were, what I now consider to be “stuffed” in the frame. In recent years photos like this have become less and less satisfying to me but I continued to take photos where the bird took up the vast majority of the frame. Part of this was driven by the pixel counts of the era. With 4, 6, 8 and even 12 megapixel cameras, in order to get enough pixels on the bird for larger scale reproduction, it was necessary to not “waste” too many pixels. But as cameras advanced to larger megapixel counts like 24 and now 36, it became possible to include a lot of the surroundings and still have plenty of pixels if a publisher does need a tight shot.
Even though I teach photo workshops, every year I attend one or two workshops as a paying participant with photographers that I respect, admire, and can learn things from. One should never stagnate in their craft! Last Spring I attended Alan Murphy’s and Brian Small’s Warbler Migration workshop on the Texas Gulf Coast. There is no better bird photographer in the world than Alan Murphy and Brian Small is one of the top experts on birding, birds in general and bird photography in the world. I am happy to call them both friends for years now. While photographing an amazing array of birds during this workshop, it hit me that I am not taking nearly as many shots with teleconverters and that I am taking a lot more shots with more of the perch and the environment included in the frame then I did in the past. As I thought more about this, I concluded that the reason for this is that we now have the tools that allow me to take the types of images that I find more visually pleasing but at the same time leave me the option to use those photos for editorial purposes where the only thing that matters is the primary subject.
Below is an example of the types of shots I used to take and what I am taking more and more of now:
Magnolia Warbler – 2003
Magnolia Warbler – 2013
I find the image from 2013 much more visually pleasing. The amazing thing is that the number of pixels that comprise only the bird is actually higher on the newer image due to the much higher megapixel camera that it was taken with. I could crop the new image so that the bird is the same size in the frame as the older image and still have a larger file and be capable of larger reproduction. Who says that newer equipment can’t unleash creativity?!
