Much as been written on the web about waiting years and years for all the elements in a scene to come together for a “once-in-a-lifetime shot.”

That’s all well and good, and sometimes it’s true.

But sometimes a good shot is just dumb luck. Here is an example.

In the above photograph, the five subjects are completely isolated, the side lighting is wonderful, the reflection is perfect, the background is effective in adding to the “sense of place” of the image, the dog adds an extra element of interest, and the exposure is good.

But for me, it totally limits my style of photography. My camera is five feet off the ground and I have limited background options.  I can’t get closer that the car can be parked. This was the situation when I tried to photograph a Long-billed Curlew in a field next to a road. The bird was used to traffic so I felt confident that I could drive up as close as the road would permit. I waited untill the evening so the sun would be behind my back (or the back of the car), but when I pulled up, the sun was behind clouds. I fired off a few frames and got the following image.

Nothing too wrong with the image. The bird is nice and sharp. The head angle is good with the bird making eye contact.

But did you know Alan came to this country as a birder?

Growing up surrounded by the beautiful countryside of Ireland and England, Alan developed a love for birds and nature early on.  He was a quick study of these birds and upon immigrating to the US in the early 1980's, Alan was thrilled to find many new species to learn about and new habitats to explore.  After studying field guides, Alan wanted to capture similar images, and so began his quest to learn photography.  Most of Alan's spare time became devoted to chasing the perfect shot. His artistic background cultivated his creative use of perches with uncluttered backgrounds and excellent lighting.

Spare time was hard to come by, for as Alan was developing his photographic style, he was also starting and developing his own salon business.  Today, the Alan Murphy Salon is a leading salon in the Houston area and is consistently ranked among the Top 200 Salons in America by Salon Today magazine.

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Creativity is a big concept for a photo blog. We spend so much time fighting upgrade fatigue, learning new software, working out new techniques that we often have very little time for creativity. But just taking note that we need to think about creativity isn’t enough. How do we go about it?