Fledgling:
I’m starting 2020 with a new blog on birding. Like many birding blogs, this one will include narratives and photos of my birding adventures in the Hamilton Study Area (Ontario, Canada) and beyond, but it will also include thoughts, reflections, and occasionally ideas on birds and birding in contemporary digital culture.
I’m starting 2020 with a new blog on birding. Like many birding blogs, this one will include narratives and photos of my birding adventures in the Hamilton Study Area (Ontario, Canada) and beyond, but it will also include thoughts, reflections, and occasionally ideas on birds and birding in contemporary digital culture.
About Me:
I’m a birder, bird photographer, and a university researcher/teacher of digital media & culture. These parts of my life are becoming entangled. In recent years, my birding has intensified to the point of becoming obsessive. I know other birders will understand this obsession. As a photographer, I’ve photographed birds and nature for over two decades. What was once a hobby has become a way of life, and now the subject of my research. As an academic, I research digital culture and pay special attention to the creation and sharing of information by members of online communities and social media streams. And here’s where my interests in birding and bird photography entangle with my research.
As has happened in so many fields of knowledge, birding has been transformed by the prolific creation and circulation of bird-related digital media, whether they be photographs, videos, audio recordings, visualizations of migration data, etc. While multiple forms of media have been part of birding from the beginning, there has never been so many people producing and sharing so much bird media, and at speeds that quickly make old news of today’s record shot of a rarity. No longer do birders refer only to a small and stable set of illustrations, photographs, and audio recordings to aid in bird identification, or simply to admire their beautiful renderings. Now, birding increasingly includes the creation of these media and their circulation on blogs and on social media. I’m interested in the effect that this proliferation of bird photographs has on how we know and understand birds and their life ways.
So, this blog will be a place where I collect records of my birding and bird photography, but also of my thoughts about birding in the digital age.
To add a little photographic flare to this first post, here's a photo of the celebrity Northern Hawk Owl that's been causing quite a stir in Schomberg, Ontario.
As has happened in so many fields of knowledge, birding has been transformed by the prolific creation and circulation of bird-related digital media, whether they be photographs, videos, audio recordings, visualizations of migration data, etc. While multiple forms of media have been part of birding from the beginning, there has never been so many people producing and sharing so much bird media, and at speeds that quickly make old news of today’s record shot of a rarity. No longer do birders refer only to a small and stable set of illustrations, photographs, and audio recordings to aid in bird identification, or simply to admire their beautiful renderings. Now, birding increasingly includes the creation of these media and their circulation on blogs and on social media. I’m interested in the effect that this proliferation of bird photographs has on how we know and understand birds and their life ways.
So, this blog will be a place where I collect records of my birding and bird photography, but also of my thoughts about birding in the digital age.
To add a little photographic flare to this first post, here's a photo of the celebrity Northern Hawk Owl that's been causing quite a stir in Schomberg, Ontario.
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| Northern Hawk Owl, Schomberg, Ontario |
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