Other than a love for image making, photography has always been a vehicle to collect reference material for my paintings. As an artist, subject detail and accuracy is important, perch and background of lesser importance.

So, the story behind this image:
The above subject is an escapee from a falconeer here in Ontario. This bird has flown about 100 miles from its owner, and currently resides on a lamp post in a Walmart parking lot. Why here? The parking lot has a full buffet of live pigeons, which Gyr has been happily comsuming. Needless to say the Falconeer is terribly unhappy (I have read that these birds can fetch as much as $50,000 on the black market).

Which brings me to the above composite image. Since this will be the subject of a painting, I have come up with a suitable (natural) background, and placed my subject in it. I think its believable and will make a great painting.

For the record, I embrace the technology that allows me to create the inspiration for my art. I should add also that photos seen on my photostream unless marked, are generally straight from the camera (I do confess to some sharpening, saturation control and a bit of cloning to remove distractions such as phone lines...)

Tags:   Falcon “Gyrfalcon” snow painting art nature Niagara” “birds Canada” “nature images” Ontario” Ontario Canada Niagara“ Earl Reinink “Earl Reinink” photography” photography photographer photographer” image images “fine art” Flikr Nikon “Nikon D4” D4 lens” lenses” Flickr ontbirds 20121115-0073a

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