Photography

Artwork Copyright © Rick McGregor

I was raised in Markham, Ontario and eventually made my way to Winnipeg. In 2015, my wife and I bought a cottage on Pinawa Bay, east of Lac du Bonnet and we moved there year-round in June of 2022. Our first winter there, a pink and grey bird landed in the snow on the roof of our cottage. We both thought, “Wow, that must be someone’s pet that has escaped!” and thought maybe we should try to catch it. Before we could come up with a plan to do that, about a dozen more of these birds also landed on the roof.

My wife had an old bird book that had belonged to her mother, so we tried to identify these birds with that. It turns out we mis-identified them but no matter, we were hooked on birds, drawn in by what turned out to be Pine Grosbeaks. Within days, Evening Grosbeaks, in their beautiful brown and yellow colouring showed up as well. We decided to buy some bird feeders to keep these gorgeous creatures coming around.

Soon thereafter, I purchased an inexpensive Canon point and shoot camera, and my new hobby of photographing birds had begun. It was not long before a beautiful Red Fox started showing up in our yard and that gorgeous animal expanded my new pastime to wildlife photography. A photo of that fox is still my best-selling print to this day.

I have since moved up to a larger Nikon point and shoot camera with a tremendous zoom lens. I do not have any formal training in photography and really know very little about cameras. I do not use Photoshop or Lightroom, nor do I use any AI software to edit my photos. I use a simple program to brighten, darken and/or sharpen my photos and that’s it.

I get a tremendous amount of enjoyment seeing a bird or animal in its natural habitat and trying to capture it exactly as I see it. By doing so, I hope my very natural photos will encourage others to appreciate and help preserve our magnificent wildlife.

My photos can be viewed at:  www.rjmlenscraft.com