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Inspiring and Supporting Photographers of Australian Birds

  • Red-eared Firetail (Image ID 37686)

    Red-eared Firetail.   Photographer: Glenn Pure

  • Red-capped Robin (Image ID 37483)

    Red-capped Robin.   Photographer: Emmy Silvius

  • Brown Falcon (Image ID 33283)

    Brown Falcon.   Photographer: Bill Harding

  • Sulphur-crested Cockatoo (Image ID 43362)

    Sulphur-crested Cockatoo.   Photographer: Rob Solic

  • Carnaby's Black-Cockatoo (Image ID 31087)

    Carnaby's Black-Cockatoo.   Photographer: Keith Lightbody

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Mystery Reviewer Critiques

All our Mystery Reviewer critique articles are available here, with the most recent ones at the top.  Those published within the last two years are member-only access; you must be logged in to see them.

The Mystery reviewer articles are written during the voting phase of the competition; the Mystery Reviewers do not know the identity of the photographers.

 

My thanks to Birdlife Photography Group and to every Advanced Level entrant for giving me the opportunity to immerse myself, for several days, in a wonderful world of wrens. Having judged at international and national levels it has been particularly enjoyable to see so many expertly and ethically taken bird shots. I’ve savoured each photograph many times and have imagined early mornings filled with birdsong, serendipitous moments and insect bites.

As someone who closely follows the photos posted on BLP, I continue to be impressed by the work of members and the standards of photography, especially in this age of social media where great photography seems to be a rarity in a sea of very ordinary snaps.  In this light (pun intended), I think everyone who entered should feel proud.  The effort and commitment shown in your work deserves recognition and I can only encourage you to keep making the effort to get out among the birds, practice your photography and hone your skills both in the field and in front of the computer.

Being out in the field with your camera taking images of birds is a very satisfying experience.  It’s particularly rewarding when a bird appears nearby, and you manage a few good images – doubly so if it’s a species you have never photographed before.

What an honour it has been to be given the opportunity to view and critique the Advanced section of this competition.  I realise all the entries have had a lot of planning, thought, time and skill put into them as it shows in the presented images.  With such a diverse variety of birds and settings it was a challenging competition to critique.  It was very difficult to separate some of the images and it really came down to minor details in the final results.

The Intermediate Level attracted a strong field with 103 entries.  There were many good pictures, some of which would be quite competitive in the Advanced Level competition.  The theme of ‘Reflections’ was well-chosen with plenty of challenges and scope for stunning imagery.  The only requirement was that ‘the reflection must be recognizable as the bird that is the subject of the photograph’.  I have interpreted this liberally so that provided the bird was easily recognizable then its reflection was still acceptable even if out of focus or broken and distorted.  I don’t think we have any images that are a reflection only in which case the subject would need to be recognizable to comply with the theme.

“Reflections” is an interesting theme, and as expected, most of the 64 entries in this Entry Level competition were of reflections in water.  I was expecting that many would have a horizontal symmetry with a stretch of water in both foreground and background; I was pleasantly surprised when most of the images showed more creative composition.

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The Our People page, in the About Us section, contains email links to each of the committee members.