The Why

Growing up, my dad always had a camera out, always pointed at me, and I spent a good chunk of my childhood laughing and dodging it, ducking out of frame, being silly about it. It wasn't frustration, just the normal push and pull of a kid who didn't want to sit still for a photo. So it's a little funny that, years later, I'm the one who wants the camera in my hand. My sister ended up the same way; she's a photographer too, so maybe it was always going to catch up with us eventually.

Birds entered the picture during the pandemic, when there wasn't much else to do. I picked up a bird book that had been sitting around the house and started reading it cover to cover, again and again. My dad and I got hooked together, going for long, slow walks, trying to figure out what we were seeing. The camera came later, and it tied back to that same family thread: my dad's been shooting since he was a kid, taught by his own dad before he passed away. In 2024, he handed me his old camera, and I started learning. So now when I'm out taking pictures of birds, I feel like I'm doing two things at once. I'm picking up a craft that's been passed down for a couple generations, and I'm spending time outside with my dad doing something we both love.

But if I had to boil down what birding really is about for me, it's this: bearing witness.

It's about paying attention. Slowing down. Opening your eyes to what's actually around you instead of moving through it. There's something about the slow walk in the woods, the pausing, the listening, letting the noise in your head quiet down, that peels away the separation between you and everything around you. Birds are a perfect way into that, because they're everywhere. It doesn't matter whether it's city sidewalks, deep forest, or wetlands. They're beautiful, all different colors, and their behavior is endlessly interesting once you actually stop to watch it.

One of my favorite examples: we once watched a chickadee slowly build a nest in a tree cavity, back and forth with twigs, over and over. We started timing it, counting how long she was in the nest and how long she was out, until we could see the pattern of what she was doing. That kind of moment, small and quiet, easy to miss if you're not paying attention, is what makes this whole thing special.

And then there's the people. Going birding with friends, spotting something neither of us has ever seen before, and having that become a shared memory forever is a real way of building something concrete with the people in your life. It's not abstract; it's a specific bird, on a specific day, that you both remember. There's even a whole side of this community that bonds over the board game Wingspan, which says something about how much people love sharing this world with each other, even indoors.

While these small and disparate interests have been brewing for a some time, photography and birding have become core parts of what make me feel alive. They are ways of connecting with my heritage, my family, friends, and the world around me.