f there’s one thing good about being a mediocre bird photographer, it’s that people who see your work know you’re not using AI.

There’s a local Facebook forum where people post the latest bird sightings here in the ant farm. People grab shots with everything from their iphones to bridge cameras to expensive bazookas. Only thing is that a few people have also been doing a bit more than grabbing shots.

Take yesterday, for instance. Someone posted a head shot (!) of a Blue-Tailed Bee Eater, beak wide open, with a very detailed dragonfly falling neatly into it. At first I’m thinking 600mm + 2X, 1/3200, fast burst, ok. But something about the barbs around the critter’s beak didn’t look just right. Checking some of my own closer bee eater shots, it looked as though the one about to gobble the dragonfly had literally combed his plumage prior to the shot being taken.

But you never know. Cameras can do some amazing things these days.

Today on that same forum, another photographer posted a similar shot of a dragonfly falling neatly into another bee eater’s beak. Let’s see…. a one-in-a-million shot happens two days in a row? At the same small park? With two different photographers? Ummm… maybe not. Today’s bee eater shot showed the whole critter—perched on a small branch. Bee eaters catch their prey with quick, graceful aerobatic moves, not by sitting and waiting for lunch to fall from the sky.

It’s kind of a bolder version of what we’ve been seeing for at least several years now: enhancement, augmentation, compositing, and now generative AI…stuff that goes well beyond what actually happened. All good and fine, especially when presented as an art form….and with disclosure.

But making stuff up with the intention of getting people to think you’re a superior photographer? Hey, there are plenty of people out there who can sniff this stuff out way better than I can.

My shots, you ask? Yep, some noise reduction. No sharpening. Some tweaking highlights, shadows, and contrast. No “twig removal.” That’s about it. And as long as people keep on conjuring up those “perfect” shots, my mediocre ones still have one thing going for them: reality.

R5/RF 100-500mm . . .