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Any time I travel to Pennsylvania my brother grabs his camera and takes me to
a couple of his favorite eagle haunts. I think Paul is the authoritative source
for eagle information in northwestern Pennsylvania. He has
always possessed a fondness for birds that dates back to when he
was a kid with a parakeet that sat on his shoulder while he rode
his bicycle around the neighborhood. The bird could not fly, but
one day Paul rode down hill around the curve that is several
hundred yards from our house and his parakeet fluttered off of
his shoulder. He searched in earnest but returned home
with nothing more than a broken heart. Paul will never forget
the first time he spotted a bald eagle.
There was a time when there were only three known nesting pairs in the entire
state of Pennsylvania, so his first glimpse of this majestic national
symbol was for him a life altering moment. He soon made spotting eagles his life
passion and kept notes and a running tally of all the eagles he saw. One year he
may have recorded 11 spottings, another year he may have seen 30 or more.
Now in more recent years he has elevated his game to a whole new
level by purchasing his first DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex camera.) Now, instead of telling people about
what he saw he can actually show them, and he has memorials to treasure for the
rest of his life. I have written over a hundred emails to him about how to
improve his photography, and though he was born with some disabilities that make
it quite difficult
for him to undertand, he has persisted until he knows more about photography
than 99% of the people who travel around with cameras. As a reward for all his
hard work, now he finds people asking him to make prints for them and he has
gotten a few of his photos published in newspapers and magazines. (Above and
previous page: Two of the great photos I captured while spotting
eagles with my brother, Paul.) |
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