Chipping Sparrow, Great Spruce Head Island, Maine, June 16, 1971

     This is one of my favorite photos by Eliot Porter, the Ansel Adams of color photography. I am a bird watcher and know how difficult it is to get a bird with it's wings spanned out or in flight. Bird photography in general is a hard subject to capture.
     The composition of the photo is great with the birds wings spanning out to the ends of the photograph, protecting her babies. The shape of the bird and the wings are beautiful, and they are not a blur from the motion, but stopped so they can be admired. The redish head and black stripped eyes are the trait of the chipping sparrow, and he caught them perfectly.
     Although the color isn't great, you have to considered that Porter did most of his color photography in the 1960-70's, which means he had to make his own color film, which was very long and painstaking work, and didn't capture color as wonderfully as color film does today.