Dear Friends,
I have just returned from a great experience in France, where I was a special guest of honor at the International Photo Festival at Montier en Der. It’s a unique festival with a hundred photographers exhibiting, and over 40,000 visitors over four days. I selected twenty of my best rain forest bird images for my exhibition at the festival, in keeping with their forest theme. I thought I’d share the story behind one of my new favorite images, that was also one of the crowd favorites. See below.
Feathers of the Forest: Rainforest Birds
Rhinoceros Hornbills have been one of my favorite rainforest birds ever since my very first trip to Borneo, and I was excited to capture this new image in Thailand during my recent hornbill assignment for National Geographic. To get a shot like this, the key thing is to be up in the canopy at the level where all the fruit is, so first we had to find a fruiting fig tree with a suitable nearby tree for climbing. Then climb the tree and construct a platform and turn it into a blind with camouflage cloth. Then come back before dawn and climb the tree by ascending the rope, pull up camera gear and set up. Then wait…. hoping the birds will come. In this case, with all these ripe figs, how could they resist? But you still need a lucky moment when the bird pops his head out from among the foliage to look around for the ripest fig. That’s when I captured this image.
Gallery Update:
My biggest sale of the year starts this Saturday the 23rd!
We are prepping a new set of Bird-of-Paradise square prints that make ideal gifts.
We have also added my “Feathers of the Forest” gallery of favorite forest bird images exhibited at Monteir en Der to the fine art site. Please have a sneak peak at www.timlamanfineart.com. Prints will be on sale starting the 23rd, so please come back then.
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Thanks for reading, and best wishes to all.
Tim
