It is always during a passing state of mind that we make lasting resolutions.—Marcel Proust
Elisa’s Resolution. I absolutely love welcoming in a New Year! I love the “fresh start” feeling—artificial though it may be. I’m also a sucker for an annual plan (I’m the first-born: It’s not my fault!), but only as a scaffold for investigation, adventure, and inspiration. I don’t really DO traditional resolutions because, well, life happens. However, in recognition of flipping the page on the ol’ Gregorian calendar, there are a few beams I’d like to add to the birding and blogging scaffold this year. In the spirit of our friend the Marsh Wren, I plan to get serious about learning more bird songs and to share my experiences in the field more often. If you’re a regular reader, you know that I am an infrequent contributor. (Frequently behind the lens, but not so much the keyboard.) Thankfully, Chris holds down an excellent fort, and hopefully, I’ll lighten his load a bit more this year.
Chris’s Resolution. With the new year comes a time of reflection and goal-setting. When I started the bird photography hobby, I thought of the camera primarily as a tool to better learn birds and document what I saw in the field. But photography, like many technical pursuits, has a way of taking on a life of it’s own. A perusal of the major digital photography blogs, for example, will show how pixel-peeping and endless hand-wringing about high-ISO noise and yadda-yadda-yadda can bleed the life right out of the birding-by-camera hobby (and which is better Canon or Nikon?). I guess gadget-talk is more amenable to the American norm of sowing insecurities to peddle a fix and turn a buck, but I want to get back to birds! I resolve to pick up the ornithology references more and the photography references less. Maybe, once and a while, I’ll leave the 600mm ball-and-chain behind and only take along the binoculars and a notebook (and most important of all—Elisa!).
“I am an old man now, and when I die and go to heaven there are two matters on which I hope for enlightenment. One is quantum electrodynamics, and the other is the turbulent motion of fluids. And about the former I am rather optimistic.”–Horace Lamb
©2015 Elisa D. Lewis and Christopher R. Cunningham. All rights reserved. No text or images may be duplicated or distributed without permission.