Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2012/01/31

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Subject: [Leica] Rant!
From: grduprey at mchsi.com (grduprey at mchsi.com)
Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:13:01 -0600 (CST)

Just grit your teeth and maybe the nightmare will fade away.  We have a 
local so 
-called Bird Photography expert who is in the same category.  A Real Gem.

Gene

----- Original Message -----
From: "Doug Herr" <wildlightphoto at earthlink.net>
To: lug at leica-users.org
Sent: Monday, January 30, 2012 9:41:03 PM GMT -06:00 US/Canada Central
Subject: [Leica] Rant!

I went to a talk on Friday night on bird photography by a well-known 
wildlife photographer who is sponsored by one of the Big Two camera makers.  
I won't mention names.  What a friggin waste of time & gasoline.  If I'd had 
to pay for parking I'd have demanded a refund.  His approach to wildlife 
photography is buy-the-longest-lens-you-can and 
buy-the-newest-and-fastest-(sponsor brand)-body-you-can, and he came across 
as the sponsor's paid spokesman (which he is).

He said NOTHING about light except for how to use more flash, NOTHING about 
composition, color (except more is better), NOTHING about bird psycology or 
bird identification, except for hiring a bird guide (more on this after I 
stop seething).

His photos were compositionally shallow and bland: no use of color or forms 
to give a sense of depth or to draw attention to the bird, hardly any 
discussion of the foreground or background except how to obliterate it.  The 
best I can say for his photos is that they show what the bird looks like.  
Nothing about how it relates to its habitat.  Empty, shallow mainstream 
photos.  And the camera maker pays him to promote this and "teach" it to the 
unsuspecting wanna-bes.

I'm still seething but I gotta get this out of my system:  He can't identify 
some really obvious western birds - and he's lived in the west most of his 
life.  He got Great Egret, Mountain Bluebird and Williamson's Sapsucker 
right but he showed a couple of captive raptors side-by-side, photos made at 
a rescue facility where he was TOLD what they are and he thought the birds 
in his photos were the same individual, when one was obviously a Prairie 
Falcon and the other was obviously a Buteo, probably a Red-tailed Hawk.  
They didn't even have the same eye color.  He couldn't identify a Rail in 
one of his photos (fullframe, good light).  He had no idea if it was a 
Virginia Rail, a Clapper Rail or a King Rail.

This is the crap that a major camera maker is promoting as wildlife 
photography.  This is what the sponsor has trained the unsuspecting consumer 
to think of as good wildlife photography.  Buy our stuff and you too can 
make these great photos.

Grrrrrr grrrrrrr grrrrrr grrrrrrr grrrrrr grrrrrrr.


Doug Herr
Birdman of Sacramento
http://www.wildlightphoto.com



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