Paul Bannick - Getting to Know your Subject

BirdNote^®

Paul Bannick - Getting to Know your Subject

Written up by Chris Peterson

This is BirdNote.(birds calling)
Today we pay homage to those who photograph birds in the wild. We asked photographer and naturalist Paul Bannick what he’s learned along the way:
“Most of the work of taking a photograph is done in advance of getting that photograph and it involves both the research work and the field work. On the research side, it involves learning as much as you can about the habitat:
Once I get out in the field, I then pay attention to the landscape where I hope to photograph this bird. I pay attention to where does the light come from?  Often times I might take a ‘grab photo’ as we call it, first, just to make sure I have one photo of that bird, in case I never see it again. Then often times what I do is sit back, often times in a blind, and I watch the bird. I watch where it feeds. I watch where it perches. I watch how it moves.  And THEN I’m able to insert myself into that bird’s environment and have as little impact as possible.
And one of my rules of photography is if I see an interesting event unfolding, I put down my equipment. I stop. I hide. I stay. I watch. I let it unfold.
Because you realize that what unfolds is much more grand than you could ever imagine.”
 See Paul Bannick's photography when you purchase the Birds of BirdNote calendar on our website, BirdNote.org.
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Sounds of  the birds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. 
Producer: John Kessler
Executive Producer: Chris Peterson
© 2011 Tune In to Nature.org   November 2011   Narrator: Michael Stein

ID#  bannickp-02-2008-11-10          bannickp-02b