Hi Everyone,

Well, since my posts of two shots of the Gyr seen Saturday on the Samish Flats got a lively discussion going, I figured I'd venture some philosophical comments both on photography and birding. I certainly have more expertise at the former than the latter, though I am increasing my birding experience level as fast as I possibly can. I think the discussion is good and helpful.

**Fair warning - those not interested in diving into the murky depths of photographic technology and philosophy should stop reading here. : - ) **

I should also say right up front that I took no offense whatsoever to either Charlie or Steve's comments about the images, because I agree with them. But I think for some people a bit more discussion on philosophy and technology might be of interest and hopefully helpful.

First, why I decided to post the photographs...

There was no doubt that the bird was a Gyr - but this is not a decision I would have personally made if I had only seen it myself, since it was actually a life bird for me. So, I claim absolutely no expertise in Gyr ID other than the normal close studying of the bird and careful checking and double-checking of what I understand to be the field marks. The reason I was convinced and decided to post the images was that Dennis Paulson, Marv Breece and several other people in my class and on the trip who have light years more experience than I do were positively convinced - not just by fleeting, incomplete looks and a debate over briefly-seen field marks but by a long opportunity to study the bird closely in the scope, and while flying and hunting. That's frankly why in my original post I name-dropped Dennis and Marv and Charlie - I knew the images were marginal, but in the context of w ho had seen the bird, I figured there wouldn't be debate over the ID and that the images mi!
ght add
something to the post and the sightings other people had earlier in the day. Our car group had a brief discussion after seeing the bird (and its coyote antics) regarding who wanted to post on Tweeters, and Dennis nominated me.

I do think that in some instances an excellent (emphasis on excellent) photograph can be sufficient documentation for a rarity. Last April I had a Brewer's Sparrow at my feeders outside my window at work in Redmond for a day and got three excellent - and I believe completely diagnostic by themselves - images of the bird. However, knowing it was a rarity in W WA, I contacted Michael Hobbs and Brian Bell and forwarded them the images for the ir review and confirmation just to be sure before posting to Tweeters. [If you're interested in these images, click the following link - http://www.tubbsphoto.com/-/tubbsphoto/detail.asp?photoID=3669546&cat=38992 - and then click Next twice to see all three images.] This record was accepted and published in the most recent edition of North American Birds and the WOS newsletter.

So, my personal philosophy is that an excellent image can well be sufficient for a positive ID, BUT I fully understand and agree with Steve that in the case of a really significant rarity a verbal description and/or drawing is necessary or at the very least highly desirable for the tough job the records committee has to do. If I had seen this Gyr by myself, I would have used the images only as additional info, and described in detail what I saw through the scope and during the bird's hunting forays. In the first term of the Master Birder program, Kevin Aanerud gave our class an excellent and eye-opening lecture on the benefits of careful field notes, drawings and observation hints in not just documenting a rarity but in truly learning what a given species really looks like.

Now onto photographic technology, a topic that I do have some expertise on (emphasis on some, LOL!). This is a bit of a diversion from a pure birding post, but a number of people have asked me about some of my images and how I photograph them so this might be of interest to some on the list. And, it does relate directly to several comments made regarding the Gyr images.

I've taken workshops from, and shot in the field with, some outstanding nationally known photographers. I know of NONE of them who believe that photographs equal reality - regardless of the technology involved (film or digital). Photography is a two-dimensional instant-in-time attempt to represent a three dimensional living and breathing world, and it can only ever be an attempt to capture some limited impression of reality. Students of photography learn all the technical reasons why - the source of light, the quality of light, the lightness or darkness of the background, the time of day, the presence or absence of other colors in the image that can change the perception of the color of the subject, and the limitations of the capture technology being used. Even the quality of the photographer's personal vision or personal perception of color comes into play when working with an image. It's only one medium of communicat ing visually, with benefits and limitations, like e!
very ot
her medium - including written descriptions.

As a (now) digital photographer, there are a couple of technical points that I'd like to point out because they are a source of confusion for many people. [Yes, some of these are still somewhat controversial, but less and less so as more serious photographers fully understand digital capture technology and workflow.] First is the viewpoint on the part of some people who have grown up with film who view digital imaging with disdain and whose view is that "film photography is real and digital photography isn't" - as if film is a standard which can never be bested, or if it is bested, it must be through digital "cheating." Some of these people will even say that no "altered" images should ever be allowed in print. Here is the technical reality - silver grains on film are nothing more than analog versions of digital pixels, end of story. Fine grain, slow speed silver films are the practical equivalent of lar ge megapixel cameras at low ISO speeds (particularly those digital!
camera
s with full 35mm sensors, because the size of individual pixels - in addition to the raw quantity of them - is what matters, just as the size and quantity of the silver grains in fine film is what matters.) Faster film has fewer and larger silver grains, the equivalent of fewer pixels per 35mm film frame and thus have more noise than slow film. "Grain" in film is virtually equivalent to "noise" and other artifacts digitally. A grain of silver on film and a digital pixel perform exactly the same function - they capture visual information and store it for later use. I worked for a time for the long-time premier film processing and printing house in Seattle, and anyone who thinks that film is "real" and there is no manipulation involved in it simply doesn't understand the developing and film printing processes. Burning and dodging expertise was a key factor (perhaps THE key factor) in Ansel Adams' astonishing black and white images. His famous Yosemite images would be ver!
y blah
and unremarkable had he not burned and dodged them plus and minus three or sometimes more stops when he printed them in the darkroom. Wet printers in the darkroom do everything possible within the limits of film technology to enhance and improve their image - to make it look more like the reality they saw when they pushed the shutter button. I'm always amazed by nature photographers who still swear that film is the only genuine capture medium - but who insist on using Fuji Velvia film, which is popular because it is formulated specifically to really enhance and (over)saturate certain colors...! Instead of saturating the image themselves digitally, they are simply letting the film do it for them - how "natural" and "real" is that? So, my very strongly held view is that film and digital technology are simply two means to the same end - capturing visual data and trying to represent it as close to the image I personally "saw" as I can. It isn't the medium, it's what you do !
with it
.

I went through the previous paragraph as a segue to the topic of sharpening and enhancing an image digitally, relating to comments Charlie Wright made regarding the two Gyr images I posted. Charlie is absolutely correct - the posted images were most definitely "enhanced" and "sharpened" - and would never be considered publishable images for anything other than an additional data point in a discussion about a bird. I don't (yet) do digiscoping, and even with top-of-the-line equipment and long lenses, the nature of bird photography is such that I almost always find myself doing some cropping of an image. In some distant photographs, particularly in poor lighting conditions as with the Gyr images, the cropping is so severe that even with a 16.3 megabyte Canon full-frame sensor camera, you wind up with very few pixels left to work with. You are left then with two poor choices: a less-enhanced and less-sharpened fuzzy image with fuzzy field marks, or an admittedly heavily sha!
rpened
or even oversharpened image to try to bring out relevant detail to represent what you saw in the field as best you can. In the posted Gyr images, I opted for the latter as a complement to the field observations of our group. [The Gyr images, for those gearheads out there, were captured with a Canon 5D body - 12.4 megapixels, full-frame sensor - and a Canon 400mm DO (diffractive optics for smaller size) Image Stabilized lens used with a 1.4X extender for an effective 560mm of lens. I use this as my 'portable' rig in the field when I don't want to be troubled by carting around a 500mm or 600mm prime lens, a beefy tripod to handle the weight, and a heavy Canon pro camera body - if I do the latter it's really a photography trip, not a birding trip. The original captured RAW file was around 12.4 megapixels. The cropped portion of the images that were the starting point of th e two Gyr images were only around 300 kilobytes.]

One other potential source of confusion that was mentioned by Evan in his post merits comment. Even people who fully accept digital as an acceptable means of accurately capturing images sometimes have the impression that the only 'real' digital image is one directly off the digital camera, and that anything done to that file in post-processing workflow is somehow inappropriate. Or, put another way, if they just take an image off the camera, it is completely unaltered. Well, it ain't so. The reality of digital cameras that many people who use them (and who don't do much or any post-processing) don't realize is that the camera software (unless you shoot in RAW format) ALREADY HAS ENHANCED what the camera ac tually captured for you. Camera manufacturers realize that only the most serious photographers want to take the time to capture neutral, unbiased data - which digitally results in flat and unsharpened images - and then control the "enhancements" of converting from RAW !
format
to TIFF or JPEG. So, the manufacturers install software that they have carefully tested with "average" consumers (whatever that means) that automatically sharpens, adjusts contrast, saturates and does other refinements of the image without requiring the photographer to do anything themselves. Yes, they still provide options and settings that allow you to vary some parameters, but when you preview your image on your camera screen or your computer it is anything but original data. Those sneaky engineers at Canon, Nikon or somebody else have given you what they think the generic "you" wants to see and considers "real". I always work in RAW even though it adds processing time because it doesn't make critical decisions for me. This (to me anyway) is particularly important with bird photography because you are trying to show in the final image the best representatio n of what your eyes and mind remembers of the sighting. I saw the bird, have a mental image of it, and so I do!
everyt
hing possible to get the final image to match what I saw.

In other words (whether for digital or film) - no photograph is real, no photograph is accurate, no photograph is unaltered. Ultimately it is still up to the photographer to do his/her best to represent accurately what they saw with each photograph. Then a decision has to be made about how much the image can stand on its on, or as added but not definitive data. Or becomes an image that winds up in the deleted folder, or in the wastebasket.

Hopefully this wasn't too much of a divergence from birding, and my apologies if I went too far into geeky photographer territory.

And to reiterate, I think the discussion generated by the images is positive, and I certainly didn't take offense to either Charlie or Steve's comments because...I agreed with them, LOL!


John Tubbs
Snoqualmie, WA
johntubbs at comcast.net
www.tubbsphoto.com