Bird Photography

A breakdown, an explanation, an aesthetic, a wonderment.

I’ve used a camera for most of my life—for about the last 60 years. I started with what was cheap and available when I was a teenager, a Minolta that was both surprisingly primitive and surprisingly satisfying to use.

It had an early match-needle exposure system: adjust shutter speed and aperture until a needle got to the middle of a small circle (the position of which was determined by the speed of your film, e.g., ASA 100 (now we use ISO, but the same kind of idea)). Frame the shot, take the picture.

Film cost money, especially for a kid, and so each exposure was a big deal. It had to be carefully considered in all its aspects in order not to waste money, time, or film. Every shot had to feel like it would be special before I would push the shutter button. Sometimes it was; many times it wasn’t, or I got something wrong.

I would then develop my film in a make-shift darkroom, and make prints anywhere I could - eventually in a local community college darkroom by volunteering some of my time to keep it clean and running.

I haven’t always had a camera, I haven’t always used the camera I had. I eventually transitioned to digital, and learned how to work with the new medium. I’ve owned cheap cameras and crappy lenses; I’ve owned magnificent cameras and outstanding lenses. The shots I love the most come from my heart, however, not from cameras and lenses, so my favorites relied on all kinds of equipment at all kinds of cost points.

But, if I am honest, a great photograph with a capable camera and a very well-designed, well-made lens is the best of all possible outcomes.

OK; that’s the prelude, the setup, the intro. My life with cameras has had its share of cadenzas (a showcase solo in music). Learning how to creatively photography architecture, for example, or clouds or people or how to use a really good camera in an expressive way (a little like mastering the violin, in that the really special photographs made with really special equipment are more challenging, not less).

All that said, most of my ‘cadenzas’ occurred with film cameras. There’s a lot to like about digital cameras: no film costs, no film development, little delay between capture and result, automation of exposures (if you want that; I use manual mode 99.9% of the time), and so on. But somehow those features, which can remove the complexity of taking a photograph, somehow also never seemed to free me up to be as creative as I wanted to be.

So I guess this piece is also about the philosophy of photography.

I did try to go back to film, but I did not have the dedication to keep it for longer than a year. I didn’t do it long enough to feel like I was able use it as effectively as I once had done when I was young. So I went back to digital, and I made a serious effort to get my hands on the very latest and very ‘best’ equipment. I was able to take photos that were more technically competent, but that extra sauce feeling of a cadenza was still missing. I kept at it, much like the proverbial fool pushing his head against a stone wall to get it to move, when what he really needs to do is to talk around it. ;)

A few months ago, maybe many months ago—time is different in your 70s—I bought a Fujifilm digital medium format (a larger sensor) camera. Thanks to my prior experience in astronomy, where I worked with incredibly expensive and advanced digital cameras, I knew a lot about the internal electronics in camera sensors, the trade-offs that get made to achieve one goal while sacrificing others. The bottom line had been that all of the high-end cameras I had experience with always had to make uncomfortable trade-offs, which meant that no camera was perfect, it was designed for a specific goal, a specifically type of imaging.

And even the new Fuji camera makes trade-offs, even if they are like obscure to the non-expert. For example, it falls apart and records the wrong colors if your exposure lets in too much light for the brightest parts of the image. That is, you cannot have a successful result unless you underexpose at least a little bit.

That’s really the only thing I know of that I always have to take into account. So the Fuji is a magnificent camera: designed with carefully balanced trade-offs, very low noise so that colors are true and rich, and so on. A nearly perfect camera for photography.

But to do artistically inclined photography, you need a very special sort of lens. This has been known for a long time, from long before digital photography. A lens needs to be sharp, of course, but 50-75 years ago, that was an extreme challenge, and only expensive professional lenses even came close to that (Canon FD lenses, for a single example, achieved an almost heaven sort of ‘soft sharpness’ that I still love).

But sharpness alone is only a small part of a great lens. It must also balance all the aberrations that light passing through transparent elements is heir to: astigmatism, coma, and higher-order (as they are called) aberrations are the bane of lens use and design.

Essentially, you perfect a lens by balancing carefully all the ways it can be imperfect, so that the final result, though a little imperfect, pleases the artist’s eye.

Digital design and manufacturing could, and have, driven down the size of the errors. But some must always remain; there is no perfect balance between design, manufacturing, and use. One lens seems cool in colors; another lens manages to be warm but soft. Some photographers will like the cool colors; some will like the warm colors, and as you gain experience you know where to find what you want. This is a key step, one of many, in shifting from casual to serious photographer.

But no matter how perfect the lens, no matter whacked the lens that gives you chills anyway—you must then become an artist, and explore how to use the lens and the camera to express how you personally feel about the photo, the subject in the photo, the balance of the colors, the intensity of the light, the mystery of the shadows. It’s not the only way to become an artist at photography, but it’s how I do it.

So I search a lot for hardware that will let me realize that kind of mad dream. Every now and then, I find something that works for me. Today is one of those days of discovery. I bought a Fuji GF 500mm lens—the type of lens you would use for birds or distant sports photography—and I took it out the back porch to see what it could do.

Me, the folks who designed the camera, the folks who designed the lens, all of that went into make today’s test shots. I could quickly see that this lens had significant potential to express the beauty that I see in the natural world. The photo below, however, was pure: sunrise, a bird cold and yet hopeful enough about the day to hang out at the feeder waiting for a little warmth before he east.

Me, with a camera, and a lens, willing once again to record what’s in front of me, supported by the hands of a lens-maker, using a bit of camera electronics created to a specification that could never have anticipated me, specifically, and yet it worked.

Pine Siskin, early morning, contemplating the meaning of ‘photographer’ between beakfuls of seeds.

What does it mean to me? It’s a moment of intimacy with life. What’s it about? Maybe it’s the lick of feathers at the top of the head; maybe I see a wistfulness about existence that the bird itself could never have explained to me—but who cares what it means? I made a photograph standing on the shoulders of profound technology, I completed a loop that I first entered at a young age eventually finding the deep beauty of it in old age. A huge, huge circle completed itself today, almost as big a one as I can make with my human lifespan. I could feel all the ages of myself gathered like witnesses, seeing that the striving, the confusion, the learning, the fighting, the hungers and the awful weight of hope meant…something.

Just like that: as simple as a click; as complex as feeling an important thread tightening up through my entire life.

Makes me think of cloth, and thread—I’m a suit, or a sail, or a bobbin or a puppet. What more do I need, beyond such a cadenza played on the vibrating strings of my life?

I thought there would be answers. There is only meaning.

And more photographs.