To date, I’ve shot over 300 rolls of film-more than 10,000 photographs-of Asian hornbills. Gradually, I succeeded and expanded my pursuit to more than a dozen hornbill species, not only in Indonesia, but also in Thailand and the Philippines. Finally, I learned that to photograph hornbills you need to have a lot of patience.
#Rhinoceros hornbill closeup how to
And I learned how to construct-while dangling hundreds of feet above the ground-blinds made of camouflage cloth, netting and leafy branches to fool the wary birds into letting me get close enough for intimate pictures. I learned how to rig these trees with ropes so I could climb up into the canopy. During that time, I learned how to identify and locate the fruiting trees that hornbills are most likely to return to day after day. Figuring out how to photograph the elusive birds in the wild, within their dense forest canopy habitat, took four years of fieldwork spread out over more than a decade. I thought, “I have to find a way to photograph these birds!”įrom that day on, getting pictures of Borneo’s hornbills, and especially the rhinoceros hornbill, became an obsession. Yet it was so far above me that getting a picture from the ground was impossible.
A flash of red meant it was probably a rhinoceros hornbill, one of the most impressive birds on the planet. Looking up, I caught a glimpse of a huge, black, big-beaked bird that landed high in a tree. My first day in the rain forest of Borneo, I heard a loud whoosh, whoosh, whoosh of wing beats above the forest canopy. IT WAS OVER 20 years ago, but I remember as if it were yesterday. In a decades-long quest to shoot pictures of some of the world's rarest and most spectacular birds, a photographer learns about patience-and the power of individuals to make a difference
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