A grand day for all to stop for a moment and look and enjoy our avian friends! There’s not a day at our home that hours aren’t spent at this simple pleasure. Below are a few of my recent bird images for you to enjoy but better yet, step outside and just look around. They are there for your enjoyment and it’s our responsibility to make sure they are there for future generations enjoyment!

When Nikon reached out and asked me to put down my thoughts on Natural Light, I was humbled by the challenge. I love these kinds of challenges, hope the results help move your photography forward. Enjoy!

Hummingbirds – A Celebration of Nature’s Jewels is a brilliant record, journal, biology text, science manual, and photographic delight on epic proportions! Glenn Bartley’s and Andy Swash’s photography is spectacular and the decades they endeavored to bring us the incredibly intriguing, rich, and colorful world of hummingbirds is a simple visual delight. I absolutely love this book! I love its rich biological roots taking us and our imagination and knowledge to locals I know I will not personally visit yet have through their words and imagery. It covers the science of light and how these flying jewels bring color to our world. It’s just a brilliant chapter! And I loved delving into the photographs where learning how they took the photographs can be learned. I’ve only had the book a couple of weeks but the pages are already well-warned as I can’t get enough. Oh my, this is just a gorgeous book I will always treasure. Hat’s off to the whole crew for a grand celebration of our wild heritage!

Knowing the question to ask in photography to get the answer you need, when you need it to make the photograph, can be the hardest question of all! It’s not like the obvious question asked just before you do a set of barrel roles … is your seat belt on, camera secured? The only dumb question to me is the one not asked. On the other hand, asking questions as a short cut to not spending some time doing research won’t get you anywhere either. The answers that stick and therefore do us good are answers we actually have to do a little work for. When the answer is just given to us, a couple of things happen. First, since it was just “given” to use we question the answer rather than thinking about and applying it. Second and probably more to the point, we forget the answer, especially when we need it the most, so what we were supposed to have learned is forgotten. Just looking from the outside in, it seems that too many are looking for that easy answer in the shortest time cheating ourselves of the process and the benefits of learning. There are rewards asking, and the question is?

At Artist Point to get the shot on the edge, I pulled out my trusty Platypod Extreme with the Playball attached (love that head!) and made the shot. You can do the same and right now, save money in the process. They have a Platypod load of offerings to take advantage of, simply insert the discount code MPBF20 and you will receive 20% off special items. Special pricing goes away the 31st … get yours now!