Photo Upgrades- A Fun Never Ending Project

 

Photo upgrade of Orange Crowned Warbler
from January

    Despite carrying around a huge camera, I identify as a birder more than a photographer. When I see a bird, I always raise my binoculars before my camera, well at least ninety eight percent of the time. I enjoy identifying the bird when I see it. That said, I also love taking photos. A photoshoot with a good bird will put a smile on my face for the rest of the day. 

   A couple years ago I decided to turn my love of "shooting" into a project. I have been trying to get photos of every bird I have seen in Rhode Island and put them into a photo album. When I get a photo better than the one I have of a species, I replace the old one with a new one, a photo upgrade. The beauty of this project is I can always improve on a photo unless I've gotten a "perfect picture". 

   I got this idea from Rhode Island resident and amazing birder Carlos Pedro. Carlos and I were birding together one day and he took a photo of a bird and called it a  "photo upgrade". He explained how he will replace his "last best" photo with a better one on his computer. I thought about this for a while and took it a step further and decided to make an album with prints. Conveniently, you can buy an album that holds 300 photos. This about the exact number of species that will be seen in Rhode Island by the best listers in a year. Not so conveniently, it is not the exact same three hundred species that will show up in a given year. So eventually you will need a second album. 

   I am going to explain how I set up my album and what works for me. Please take it with a grain of salt. If you think it is a cool idea to make an album of your best bird photos, do it however way you like. There are no rules and the point is to make it your own anyway, I have other ideas on how a photo album could be set up below how I do it, but again they are mere suggestions.

   To begin with, I started with two albums. The "second album not only has "overflow birds from Rhode Island" but also species I've photographed from other states such as South Dakota and Florida.  As I said,  there are more than 300 species that come to Rhode Island so I had to make a decision on how to organize these albums. So in my second album I put photos of the most common birds. These include feeder birds such as Titmouse, Juncos, Cardianls, etc. Also really common are Mallards, Pigeons, Herring, Ring Billed, and Great Black Backed Gull, and Mourning Doves. This saved about fifteen species from my main book. Also of note, I did not include photos of the three destructive invasive Starling, Mute Swan, or House Sparrow.

 

I didn't get Audubon's Shearwater, but it was 
awesome seeing this young Long Tailed
Jaeger over two thousand feet deep water. 

  I set up my main photo album much the same as most field guides are set up. I started with waterfowl, grebes, alcids, gulls, etc. The back of the book has warblers and sparrows. I wrote in the margins each species I either saw or know is a good possibility IN PENCIL. I then put a photo if I had one next to each bird's name. It turned out I had a lot less species than I thought barely going over two hundred. This sounds like a lot, but in a three hundred page album, that is a lot of blank space. 

   This is where it got fun. I put a list together of the species I had either terrible photos of, or none at all and started working on it whenever I was out birding.  You will be amazed at how many photo opportunities will present themselves when you are looking at all the birds and not just target birds. 

   When writing species names in the margins I wrote down species many people might not go for. An example is Audubon Shearwater. They are really only seen a hundred miles out on the ocean near the canyons. However, I love pelagic trips and took one to the canyons this fall. Although Audubon's Shearwater is normally a sure bet out there, we didn't see one, so that spot is still blank in my album. For those people that may be afraid of boats or get seasick, you could save room for other species by removing most Shearwaters and Jaegers from your album if you know you may never see them. 

Life Photo of a 
Blue Grosbeak

   As I mentioned, the album is full of photo upgrades. Chances are if  I have a bad or so/so photo I can not wait to get an upgrade and take the old photo out. For example, the first Blue Grosbeak I got a photo of was in June at Carter Preserve. It was near dusk, thirty five feet up in a dead snag with a darkening sky. The bird was nothing more than a tiny silhouette in my photo, but it counted as a life photo of a Blue Grosbeak. Three months later at Snake Den Jan StJean and I saw one on a wire, It was much closer, and even with the grey sky behind it, the photo is ten times better. Out with the old and in with the new. Its a decent photo of a "brown" Blue Grosbeak, so there is still plenty of room for improvement. 

Blue Grosbeak
Photo upgrade at Snake Den

   As I said above, you can make an album anyway you want and follow whatever rules or guidelines you want. My album is only birds I have seen in Rhode Island (as I said I have a separate album for Florida and West birds). Of course there could be a New England Album if you prefer. It could be species you've seen everywhere in the USA or world all lumped together. Maybe your album could start with the first species you got a photo of and keep going and dating the margins (that sounds kind of fun). For me, it is strictly species I have seen in Rhode Island (for Album 1). However, not every photo is from Rhode Island. Example- I usually see Eastern Meadowlarks a couple times a year in RI, but my best photo of one was in the Everglades. We were walking through the parking lot to the Visitor Center and one popped up right in the swamp twenty feet from me. I got a frame filling photo. I don't have anything close to that from RI so I put it in my album. There are a few species I've seen in Rhode Island but my best photo might be from another state. Maybe a purist would be offended, but as I have repeated numerous times, it is my album.

Though I've seen Meadowlarks in RI for
many years, I've never had one pose like this one 
in the Everglades

   Sometimes I may get a photo that isn't better than the one I have, but is different. Maybe one, the bird is closer but in the other I have better light. Maybe sometimes, you just like both photos. So I may get a copy of both photos and switch them back and fourth. In that way, the album is always changing also. 

   One disadvantage of writing all of the expected species in an album is what to do with mega-rarities. I have to tell ya, I didn't see that problem forthcoming. Never did I expect Red Necked Stint, Little Stint, Terek's Sandpiper, Common Cuckoo, and Varied Thrust to all show up in a six month period. Besides those birds I saw a Ruff in Westport, MA and a Western Kingbird in Barrington.  I added a section in album 2 for mega-rarities. This is not ideal because the "best birds" are not in the album that I spend the most time upgrading and looking through. I may have to rethink how and where I put these photos, This is why I used pencil in the first place so the book could always be evolving. 

Admittedly, this photo of a couple pages in
my album isn't going to win me any prizes, 
but it gives you an idea. These pages are 
dedicated to plovers. The bottom right one is a 
Wilson's Plover found in April 2020

   If a photo album of photo upgrades is something you are interested in, here are some specs. Walmart and Michael's both sell photo albums, but because they sell a lot less they don't always get restocked when they do sell out. The best place to get a 300 page album is Walmart.com. I think they are only eight or nine dollars. You can get photos developed at multiple places on the web. There is Snapfish, Shutterfly, and Walmart, and probably a bunch of other places. CVS and Walmart have photo developing services. Walmart photos are nine cents each. I usually get an order of prints when I build up enough life photos and upgrades to make it worth while. Usually that is in the thirty-forty range. Sometimes I'll wait for a certain date, like June 15 after spring migration or after December 31. Mostly I decide to get an order when I want to upgrade.

   There you have it, my never ending project. I love everything about this project. Even if I have a bad day birding, believe it or not, there is usually some bird that put on a show for me. It may be a really common Least Sandpiper or a Carolina Wren, but usually something good happens. Today a Pink Footed Goose was reported by April Alix in Johnston, RI. I was in South Kingstown looking at Snow Geese but the PFG was on my way home so I stopped. I had only seen one before but had gotten good photos of it. This one was so cooperative and swam to within ten feet of me. It walked on land and the pink legs were obvious so despite thinking I couldn't improve my photos I did. But, I also got a twofer! In the flock of geese and ducks a Black Duck came swimming by and I got a photo upgrade of that bad boy also.

The pink legs of the Pink Footed Goose.