I’ve been doing a lot of reading and thinking about bird photography and it has struck me that there are a number of different ways or perspectives that people use to approach the genre. These tend to result in different views of what makes a good bird photograph. I thought it might be useful to lay out some of the ways in which people have approached bird photography and generate some discussion and thoughts on what most motivates each of us.
Oliver Pike in Britain and Keithley Job in the United States, writing around 1900 were touting bird photography as a substitute for hunting. While they were interested in the artistic aspect, they seem to have gotten their reward more from the pursuit of the bird and getting close enough to obtain acceptable images than from the image itself. The image was more a trophy of the hunt than an end in itself. This rationale, whether it was their actual motivation, was proposed by many later photographers, largely, I suspect, in hopes that more hunters would substitute the camera for the gun. This attitude has carried on and is still followed by many bird photographers or birder/photographers. I have seen very good modern bird photographers say that it’s the stalking that’s important.
Other photographers, such as Art Morris, author of “Birds as Art” and its successor digital edition and Alan Murphy, author of “The Guide to Songbird Set-up Photography” approach the craft more from the point of view of an artist. The composition and image quality then become dominant. While I’m sure they still enjoy the hunt and the thrill of getting the shot, there is much more emphasis on the final image as an end in itself.
Some photographers, such as Mathew Tekulsky, author of “Backyard Bird Photography”, 2014, and countless others, just like to take pictures of birds, and are quite satisfied if that bird happens to be perched on their feeder. In fact there is a bit of pride in the idea that they have attracted this bird and it has come to them. I do confess myself to having leanings in this direction, though I rarely photograph birds on the actual feeder, I have no such qualms about photographing them in my water features, which is much the same thing. I think that this group is actually much like the hunters discussed above and the photograph is again more of a trophy than an end in itself.
Then there are the ornithologists, such as Frank Chapman, curator of ornithology for the American Museum of Natural History for many years and editor of Bird Lore as well as author of “Bird Study with a Camera” and Arthur A. Allen, the founder of the ornithology department at Cornell and author of “Stalking Birds with Color Camera” for whom photography had a two-fold purpose. Firstly in their work as professional ornithologists, it was a tool used to document the existence, habitat and behavior of species. Technically, as long as the species and behavior and habitat are identifiable and portrayed accurately, the image quality and certainly the composition are largely irrelevant, though Chapman also used photography to help document habitat groups for the museum so that artists could create the proper backgrounds and the foregrounds could be accurately laid out.
Secondly, both men were actively involved in the popularization of bird watching and bird study, Chapman through Bird Lore and Allen through a large number of articles in the National Geographic magazine and others. These required high quality and artistic images to appeal to a wider audience than their fellow ornithologists. This duality exists to this day in the ornithological world. Good images are necessary to keep public interest and public interest is necessary to fund the research which generates the images as a byproduct.
All of the above approaches seem to me to be completely valid and I suspect that most of us approach our photography as a mix of these ways. I know that I do.