The Art of Bird Photography

September 20, 2000

Arthur Morris answers questions about bird photography, discusses his work as a bird photographer and his books, including "The Art of Bird Photography."

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PhotoAlley: Welcome to the PhotoAlley.com Forum. Tonight's special guest is Arthur Morris. Artie is here to answer any questions you have about bird photography, from equipment to technique.

Arthur Morris: Hi gang! I hope we have some fun tonight, and I look forward to answering your questions as best as I can.

Birdenthusiast: When did you first become interested in photographing birds? What came first? The camera or the winged friends?

Arthur Morris: I started birding in 1977, and there were a couple of things that got me started. A very nice gentleman from Long Island volunteered to bring his backyard warbler home movies to my school, and that piqued my interest. And I worked at a pool club in Canarsie, Brooklyn, and I would stare through the chain-link fence at what I called then the long necked Florida birds which were feeding in a salt marsh creek. I found out later that they were Snowy Egret and Great Egret. Then one morning when I was out fishing, I saw a Black Skimmer just cutting across the surface of the water, going up and back, and I stood there mesmerized. I went to the library and looked at the Golden Guide and found Black Skimmer, and then I was off to seven years of very intensive birding. In August 1983, I bought my first lens--the Canon FD 400mm f/4.5. Like most beginning bird photographers, I was amazed that when the first pictures came back, the birds were just specks. So to sum up, the seven years of birding absolutely came first. That was a great help because the Number One rule in photography is to know your subjects. I've always said it's much better to take a birder and teach him photography than to take a good photographer and teach him about the birds. That's much more difficult.

JudiTC: These pictures are awesome! When did you realize you had this talent?

Arthur Morris: That's a tough one! When I was in my 30s, I always was jealous of people with artistic talents. I'd hear a song on the radio that would make me laugh or cry. I'd go to a Broadway show or an art museum or a concert, and might leave laughing or crying or moved. I always felt that in some way I'd been cheated; that I had no artistic talents that could move people. Then when I started photographing, after two or three years, I started to do some slide programs locally. I guess the first time that I put a slide up and everyone in the audience went, "Oooooooo," that's when I first realized I had some talent. The second part of my answer is that, even though I realized that I had some sort of gift (and it really was a gift that was developed, not given), when I first started, I put all the birds in the middle of the frame. That is very bad artistically. But even now that I know I have talent, I work very hard every day--I photograph in excess of 300 days a year--and I work very hard to get better every year. I'm not satisfied with where I am now, especially with the new technology. You can really push the envelope and do some really amazing stuff. With auto-focus and image stabilizer lenses, the sky really is the limit as far as producing stuff that's more and more artistic.

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