When it comes to making bird portraits, my first and MOST IMPORTANT rule is to NOT disturb the birds and wildlife. I never “stalk” my subjects in order to get closer. Instead, I practice the concept of putting myself in a promising location and then wait for birds and wildlife to come to me. It’s amazing how close the birds and wildlife will come to me when they know I pose no threat to them.

And then I take a lot of pictures of birds! Every once in a while I’ll take one where I feel a special “connection” is made especially with birds. A bird may turns its head “just right” or look into my lens and nearly speaks out loud saying “How’s this pose?” or “Is this my best side?”. At that instant I know the shot is going to make a great portrait and I say out loud to the bird “Thank you… that was perfect”.

My desire with making these bird portraits is to emulate “traditional” portrait painting styles that Rembrandt, Vermeer or Da Vinci - aka “The Old Masters” used in making their portraits. The background should hardly be noticeable but draw more focus onto the bird. The pose of the bird, and if possible - the eye-contact, should make a connection with you, the viewer, to draw you in and feel included in the portrait.

One final crucial point - and I want to make this absolutely crystal clear --- I never >NEVER< ever --- use AI when making any of my digital artwork. Each and every bird photo used in my artwork has been taken by me, often after having spent countless hours, days, months photographing the birds to get "just the right shot". I use digital software (similar to but not Photoshop) to manually remove the background elements. I don’t even use the "automatic background removal" tools when making my art but rather I do it manually. And finally, I replace the background with one that I've manually created either by digitally painting or sometimes combining it with another photograph that I've taken.

This is my digital art that’s based on my photography and I'm proud of what I make. It's not AI and never will be.