Nature photography 104: questionable practices (part 3)

To make a very long story short, I keep finding myself annoyed with nature photography. I was very worked up a few days ago, when I became quite confident that the winner of a fairly large photo contest must have edited/doctored the photo... I then look at said persons website, and found some very blatant editing along with large amounts of shameless self-promotion as a truly expert photographer. 

This really wasn't anything new, but I learned something from it: People can do whatever the heck they want, and I shouldn't care about it. If it bothers me, I can just focus on how I conduct myself and my photography! And with that said, I had the idea to reveal some of the work done on my own photos on my personal website. 

Are you ready for a look at everything you may or may not already know about nature photography? I'll post the website version first, followed by the totally un-edited original,

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Part 3: the first look at some questionable practices. We'll focus on a photo shoot with a few Northern Parula's:

http://www.peregrineprints.com/zz_NOPA.htm

Northern Parula in June (Ontario). I've posted on the blog, in the past, about my troubles with passerine photography. The main problem being my lack of interest in doing the required work to consistently get good photos. The main thing I was missing out on, was using recorded calls (Ipod/speakers) to lure in males on their breeding territories. See below for a Parula going banana's and landing on my speakers to look for the "singing culprit":

The use of recorded calls, played back with portable speakers, is by no means easy. It is still very hard to get good pics of songbirds even under the best circumstances, but there are many who would feel that this is harassment of the birds when they abandon their breeding duties and focus on the source of the "intruder" ...

Although sticking to the main focus of the blog, I'm not here to try and say what I think is right or wrong. I'm just revealing some of the things I've done with a bit of back story. At most, I feel it is mainly a P.R. problem until you get a local breeding rarity (or endangered species) having to deal with frequent calls. But anyways, It is something I've slowly stopped doing.. Yet in the future, I will probably bust out the old speakers when I do some travelling (eg,,/ Out west) where I need to increase my productivity in order to photograph many species I don't have around here, in a short period of time.

Up next:

There is an added element to "playback photography" that I've yet to mention, which occurred in the above image (but not the previous images). The first two were on natural perches.. This above image is a branch that I took from the nearby woods (dead and covered in lichen), duct taped it to a spike and  stuck in the ground directly above my speakers - and waited/hoped to get the bird to land where  I wanted it. 

It may not seem like much in the above image, but it is not uncommon to to spend more time "setting up" the photo than actually taking them. Individual branches can be selected from anywhere, leaves/berries etc. can be "pruned" to increase the visual appeal, and placed in just the right spot for light and background issues. 

Above image with all the colour/contrast changes. Drawn out with a speaker, onto a previously selected branch that is duct taped in just the right spot. Some up-side to this photography is that you often get a brilliant male as the bird that responds. 

I think sometimes photographers keep some of these practices secret, since they're worried that the legions of people out there taking bird pictures will start to cause trouble. I've heard a few stories (that seemed horrible to me) of photographers spending hours or days in the same territory of a single bird... And that just sounds terrible to me, but again, trying hard here to not preach (and just tell my tale). But a bit of information for those who may not have known or noticed these things before!

-- also some knowledge about which of my photos have had this happen, and some examples where I haven't done any of it! (which I'll probably reveal in future installments for many pics on my website). 

As always, I am not likely to change any of my practices, but I would be very curious to hear what you think about the editing I've done or the practices used. Good/bad/immediate reaction, annoyed? etc...