Friday, June 3, 2011

Dead birds

I have been reading a guide to taking photographs of birds by leading nature photographers Markus Varesvuo, Jari Peltomäki and Bence Mate. (In Finnish, Lintukuvauksen käsikirja, published by Docendo in April, 2011.) It is a good book, explaining how award-winning bird photographs are taken: what camera bodies, what lenses, what tripods, what bait, etc. to use.

It is a full-time job (and really full time, including nights as well as days) to make a living as a bird photographer. Not something I would like to do.

In addition, I feel that the approach illustrated in the book is a kind of dead end - of technical perfection. Even though the writers warn of the dangers of having a "plastic" look in the photographs, many photographs in the book have this look.

Maybe I just disagree with this kind of approach where colors are saturated and backgrounds are blurred to the vanishing point. Not all photographs in the book are like that, but all too many are.

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