I was working back from Los Angeles yesterday - a post on the stunning Carrizo Plain is on its way incidentally - when a colleague (whom I’d told on the flight from London that I was going birding on my time off) asked me politely how I’d got on and if I’d managed to get any decent photos. I said yes, I’d got a few pretty good ones, and that I’d also got a few record shots that I wanted to keep to show Graham, my Big Year competitor, at a later date. My colleague raised an eyebrow in that “Who do you think you are?” way that implies you’ve suddenly gone FAR down in their estimation, and then said, “You’re that good are you…?”

I had absolutely no idea what she’d suddenly found so arrogant in what I’d said until we talked about it and I found out that she’d assumed that by “record shot” I meant that I’d taken an award-winning, superlative shot that was a ‘record-breaker’. Such arrogance is a real no-no. Being British we’re programmed from just after birth not to ever think that we’re actually good at anything, and we’re absolutely crossing the line if we not only think it but then go on to tell someone else about it. By nonchalantly stating that I’d taken a “record shot” I was so far over the line there was almost no way back…

Almost. Happily I was able to clear up the confusion (and regain my previous reputation for virtuous modesty so typical of us shy, retiring Brits), by explaining just what a ‘record shot’ really is. For the record, as it were, a “record shot” is one that under virtually all criteria used to judge photographs is an unsuccessful shot, an image only fit for deletion, a picture that has no merit at all - other than that it could be useful as proof that a birder actually saw the species he or she claims to have seen.

Take the two photos below. One is of a Sage Thrasher, the other is of a Burrowing Owl. I doubt whether if I hadn’t just provided the identification most birders would have been able to confidently ID both birds (though the owl is more obviously identifiable than the thrasher). I’m also pretty certain that no birder/photographer looking at them will be rushing to the comment button to commend me for them either. However, they do have a purpose: they may possibly be the only Sage Thrasher and Burrowing Owl I see this year, and if I hadn’t kept them “as proof of observation” it may well be that a sceptic (and you know who you are) looking over my Year List might well say, “Hmm, Sage Thrasher in the Carrizo Plain you say…really?”. With them I can reply, “Yes”. Had I taken the photo in the UK (where Sage Thrasher has never been recorded) then my awful photo might be good enough to get acceptance as proof of a first for Britain - though convincing anyone that I’d managed to photograph a bird found in deserts in the western US and southern Canada as it posed on a sage bush, a plant not found in the UK, somewhere in Britain might be a little tough.

Anyway, all of this is interesting up to a point but I thought I’d write this post for another reason than just proving to the wider world that I saw a Sage Thrasher a few days ago.

When I first started taking bird photos I was constantly comparing my results with the photos I was seeing on blogs and websites - and getting quite depressed by my often woefully inadequate efforts. How come, I thought to myself, these guys are getting way better photos than me all the time? One friend of mine in particular, Martin Cade the warden of Portland Bird Observatory, used to post some amazing photos of birds that I’d actually seen but failed to get even close to. One day I asked him what he was doing to be able to post such amazing photos. The answer? Deleting the hundreds of rubbish ones that he wouldn’t want anyone else to see and posting the one or two that were reasonable!

It’s a point that all budding or neophyte bird photographers ought to keep firmly in mind: the photographs that most people post on their blogs and their websites are usually the best of a very large selection.

I’m certainly no different. For example, when I post about the Carrizo Plain in a day or two I’ll illustrate the text with seven or eight photos that are amongst the very best of the over 400 that I took while I was there. Pro photographers may throw their hands up in horror at what I’m about to say, but I deleted loads of those 400 photos just seconds after I took them because I thought they were obviously not worth saving. I deleted about another 25% after I’d transferred them from the camera card to the computer and seen them on the screen. And I’ve since deleted another 25% more having chosen the ones that I may at some point want to use in the future. The few you’ll get to see have been carefully selected, and then processed to get the best out of them. None of them will be ‘record breakers’ - but hopefully they’ll be the “pretty good ones” I told my colleague on the plane about.

And the photos of the thrasher and the owl? If I hadn’t needed to keep them as “record shots” they’d have been long deleted and forgotten about.

So, please, if you’re just starting out taking bird photographs and discovering that it’s actually a lot more difficult than you’d realised, don’t get discouraged looking at other people’s photos. It’s a racing certainty that even the best photographers went through the same phase you’re going through right now, taking hundreds of photographs of which only one or two were any good at all and getting very downcast about all the ones they were deleting. Chances are that they’re still taking lots of rubbish photos which they go on to delete (they don’t worry because they’ve learnt through experience that a) it’s perfectly normal, and b) who cares anyway?).

Photography is great fun. The more photos you take the better you’ll probably become - and even if you don’t get to be an expert, does it really matter as long as you enjoy yourself? Of course not…And should you ever think I’ve taken a photo that you may not be able to take (it’s possible I suppose), think about that hopeless Sage Thrasher “record shot”, and remember how many photos I took and deleted to get the one reasonable image I went on to post!