….BIRDS. Who would have thought this would be my first shoot of the year? Not me, but the crazy rainy weather here in Southern California has made it hard to schedule photoshoots. I’m not really a bird photographer, but it honestly was therapeutic to get out and shoot in nature.

Shooting birds forces you to slow down and really think about your shot because they are so skittish–you also get a bigger hit of serotonin when you do finally get the shot you were going for because even the simplest shots take a lot of work. You can’t look at a bird and be like “Hey, hold that face and pose, that’s perfect!” like you can humans (I mean, you could I guess, but I feel like your success rate would be relatively low.

I don’t really have the ‘proper’ equipment for bird photography, I used my old trusty Canon 70-200 for most of these. It has a little reach, but not near enough for truly great photos of smaller birds or anything super far away, which made these even more challenging. After a while, my arm started to give out (if you know about the 70-200’s, you know how heavy it is!) and I switched to my fav portrait lens–the Sigma 85 1.4 ART.

Here are a few of the shots:

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First shoot of 2023 is…*drumroll*

First shoot of 2023 is…drumroll