2022 Audubon Photo Awards Top 100

Just saw this got released a couple of days ago and thought it might be a fun look for those bird loving friends of ours in the forum!

#19 in particular caught my eye as an awesome capture.

Of course, hailing from South Florida what’s not to love about #16? :smiley: :smiley:

The skill and patience of wildlife photographers never fails to amaze me…

9 Likes

Thanks for the link :slight_smile:

This is amazing, thanks for sharing. That swallow photo mid flight is incredible, I can’t fathom how people can take photographs like that. Something to work towards, without a doubt :smiley:

Some statistics on the cameras and lenses used :

Top 3 cameras used :

  1. Canon EOS R5 (14 out of 100)
  2. Nikon D850 (12)
  3. Nikon D500 (8)

Top 3 lenses used:

  1. Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM (13 of 100)
  2. NIKKOR 200-500mm f/5.6E ED VR (9)
  3. Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS II USM (8)

Top 3 camera/lens combinations:

  1. Nikon D500 / NIKKOR 200-500mm f/5.6E ED VR (5 of 100)
  2. Canon EOS 7D Mark II / Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM (4)
    and
    Canon EOS R5 / Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM (4)
  3. Nikon D850 / NIKKOR 500mm f/5.6E PF ED VR (3)
1 Like

It’s good to see that many of these were created by non-professionals, and quite a number of them with decidedly “unprofessional” gear.

At the live meeting, we went through the images and commented on what we found interesting. One observation I made was how the standard human portrait is face-on but unique and unusual in bird photography.

I think it might be because humans have eyes pointing forward, but birds and many other animals have eyes on the sides of their heads, so a face-on photo looks funny, like the flamingo above.

So many of these pictures are amazing. Indeed - a lot of patience and skill.

@arbitrary.reindeer It isn’t just that but how we take the portraits. E.g., this one is less portrait-like in terms of light and composition, so not as unusual: