About a week ago I spent the better part of a day watching television.   Yes I should  know better but I did have my reasons.   After watching daytime talk shows, game shows, dramas, comedies and reality shows  I certainly came to the conclusion that we have never been more obsessed with physical beauty and appearing sexy.   I witnessed very little natural attractiveness.   Doctor induced beauty (female and male) seemed to be the rule rather than the exception.  Attractiveness brought on by good diet and exercise certainly existed, but even those of that ilk had a lot of un-natural cosmetic additions.  If television reflects the real world or at least is in the business of giving us what we want, we have come to a scary crossroad.  The conversation and actions that I witnessed on television told me just how much more we seemingly appreciate exterior physical beauty than we do true inner beauty.  Its true there are a lot of people forcing themselves into tears for the camera but I am speaking of true beauty, not just another aspect of show business.  I sit and ponder how superficial a society can become before it crumbles.  Is it a radical viewpoint to believe that beauty occurs from the inside out instead of the reverse?

As nature photographers we search out our share of beauty.  Certainly I do.  I love those beautiful locations.  I can look for quite a while for that perfect flower.  Let there be no question that I am quite happy when I find a bird (male ?) in full breeding plumage and with a perfect background.  A few years ago I made a conscientious decision to appreciate the less than perfect specimens in nature.  There is great educational value to showing everything in nature.   One thing that spurred this decision was when I went through a birder’s field guide to ID some pix and found only about 75% of the species of songbirds showed female birds.  How do you study a species of birds when you cannot even find out what 50% of some types of birds look like. 

You can blame this late summer/early fall season for inspiring today’s blog.  I managed a rare day with the camera yesterday.  I focussed on small birds and it seemed like the majority of what I found was either in winter plumage, was an immature or was molting.  I decided to just except that fact and take my own advice, which is always hard to do.  I just made bird pictures regardless of the state or color or their feathers.  The top group of photos were made previous to yesterday.

I do think the current definition of beauty is indeed skin (or feather) deep.

All males

Baltimore Oriole

Red-winged Blackbird

Yellow Warbler

Indigo Bunting

Eastern Meadowlark

American Goldfinch

Immature American Goldfinch 9/21/10

Immature male Northern Cardinal 9/21/10

Immature female House Finch 9/21/10

Black-capped Chickadee 9/21/10

Bonus Shots

There is nothing I like better than a location that is perfect for both wildlife and landscape photography.  I do think Glacier N.P. in Montana is the best known for this with Rocky Mt. N.P. in Colorado just a bit behind.  While Yellowstone N.P. in Wyoming is the premier wild mammal photography park in the lower 48 states, few people pursue this flawlessly beautiful spot for landscape photography.  Many that do just create images of Yellowstone Falls or Old Faithful Geyser.  Today’s top picture was made on my very first morning of my last trip to Yellowstone.  The second shot is a semi abstract of a thermal area from the same trip.  Less pretty but it does help tell the story.

Thank you,

Wayne