Nature Photos Aren’t Always What They Seem And Here’s Why.

I absolutely love nature photography and using a camera to share interesting encounters from the world around us is actually the driving force behind this website.

But there is a side, however, to photographing nature that I don’t particularly like at all.

That’s the side where the full context of an almost unbelievable photograph isn’t given, for whatever the reason might be, and the viewer is left thinking one thing when the reality behind the image is something completely different and quite misleading.

Take the image at the top of this blog post, for example.

I photographed that particular image a few weeks ago at Farmington Bay WMA while out on a short, early morning birdwatching trip.

Here is a super-cropped version of the image to give you a better idea of what is going on in the image.

At first glance, it appears the red-winged blackbird is hitching a ride on the back of the hawk, a scene I have actually seen plastered all over the internet in recent times claiming just that with a similar image taken by another photographer.

But visualize what actually was going on with an image or two just before and after that particular photo was taken and the full context of the scene begins to unfold and the notion that the red-winged blackbird was hitching a ride on the hawk’s back is easily dispelled.

What was really happening in this and all other scenes where a red-winged blackbird appears to be riding on a hawk’s back is rather nothing more than the red-winged blackbird harassing and chasing the hawk away from the blackbird’s nesting site.

In fact, a tern even got in on the act if the full story is given here as both birds were only protecting their nests, and once the hawk was gone both birds returned to the young.

The top photograph was just one where the camera luckily caught the red-winged blackbird and hawk in a most unusual split-second situation where the blackbird was physically pestering the hawk, one after given in its full context is certainly nothing like it first appears.

Nature photography can be quite misleading at times, especially when only one particular image taken from a burst of images used to capture the scene at hand is put out there for all to see and admire but with no supporting images to explain the full scenario.

When it comes to telling a story through digital images, photographers have a lot of power by which photos they show or don’t show in what you, me, and everyone else that sees the image is led to believe.

Photographers also have a lot of power by how they crop their images, letting you see only the part of the image they want you to see despite what was fully captured by the camera.

So next time you see an incredible, almost unbelievable nature image, stop and think what the preceding and following images taken in that particular series would say about the photo at hand.

(Great Egret Catching A Weather Loach. For short nature clips like this one and interesting stories about the natural world around us, check out our Bear River Blogger channel on YouTube for videos and updates from our travels while out in nature, both on and off of the famed Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge.)

Trust me, there is always a lot more to the story than what one single image can say.

Don’t discredit the image from being an interesting and amazing image, mind you, just realize one picture a full story doesn’t tell.

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