Wildlife Photography – Why?

I am never happier than when I have a camera in my hand. I fell in love with taking pictures in high school - a very long time ago. When my friends were shooting Nikormats and Canon SLRs I had a Mamiya-Sekor with a Pentax mount lens. It didn’t matter. While I love all types of photography – wildlife photography gives me the greatest satisfaction. It is the opportunity to capture – just for a moment – one of God’s creatures and share that moment with my family and my friends old and new. I know some of my fellow-photographers think I’m a little crazy about this – they may well be right – but I don’t question the passion, I just go with it. There are some ethical issues around wildlife photography that can be difficult. From baiting animals (never) to establishing feeding stations (only for birds and then not strictly for photography) to private game ranches (never) who used to sponsor “hunts” of non-native species until they realized they could make as money with photographers and not have to replace the lions, tigers or bears (oh my!). One of the issues with wildlife photography is the use of critters that have been captured from the wild. My view is that if the organization does work to rescue and rehab critters than I am more than willing to pay to photograph that critter to support their good work. Here in Colorado one of these organizations is a company call Hawk Quest who rescues injured raptors and when possible returns them to the wild. This image of a long eared owl is from a Hawk Quest shoot in 2014 and the owl was not at all stressed (you can tell). When I post an image of a captive animal I always identify it as such as do most photographers. In this way I get to share images of critters that I might not be able to capture in the wild. One person’s opinion for sure, but wanted to explain why your seeing a few images like this at the moment.