“I knew from the beginning I’ve always wanted to be a person that worked with animals. Taking pictures, videos of them. This is a wood duck, it was taken at Valley Green in Philadelphia. My goal was to really just capture the singular bird by itself coming towards me.”
“This is a really beautiful bird. You can see the green head crest, the beautiful red chest with the white spots. Oh, this is a beautiful duck.”
“They were like over 20 of them out there going around. Males and females, geese flying around. It's a pretty chaotic scene.”
“For this one, it was a bit scary, but I had to have my camera hanging over the water, like basically almost falling into the water to get that eye-level shot.”
“So, got the shot, got the water. I just love the face of it looking up at the light in a sense. It kind of had an exploration, like, where is it going? It’s going somewhere — and it seems like it’s on a journey.”
“People see a cool picture on social media and say that's a cool picture. They’ll like it and keep scrolling.”
“But the picture doesn't really tell you the amount of hours or the amount of bugs that were biting you, or that the sun was burning you up, or the freezing cold, or all the obstacles you have to go through to get the shot.”
The Perfect Shot
Featured in a new birding exhibit, local wildlife photographer Anwar Abdul-Qawi talks us through how he got one of his favorite shots.
As the animal programs manager at Drexel University’s Academy of Natural Sciences, Abdul-Qawi has always been curious about the creatures in our city. His stunning shots are mostly captured right here in Philadelphia, his hometown. His birding photography is featured in the Academy’s current “Conversations With Birds” exhibit, open through May 21.
During the pandemic, he began photographing anything he could find — pigeons, squirrels, geese — on his cell phone during nature walks. He saved up for a Canon camera, then an eight-pound special lens. He put on earth-tone colors of dark green or brown and a wide-brimmed hat to blend with his surroundings. With his work included in this exhibit, Abdul-Qawi hopes to get more people outside to explore and photograph the rich wildlife all around them.
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“Conversations With Birds” aims to get Philadelphians interested in birding and bird conservation in their neighborhoods. In addition to wildlife photography, the exhibit will include live demonstrations of ornithologists preparing bird specimens for preservation. Technology tracking migratory bird routes will be on display, along with nest cam footage of a peregrine falcon and bald eagle in Pennsylvania. The Academy invites guests to look inside one of the biggest and most complete bird collections in the world, boasting 205,000 bird specimens from more than 7,000 species. It contains samples dating back to 1811.
“Conversations With Birds” runs through May 21 at Drexel University’s Academy of Natural Sciences, 1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Phil., (215) 299-1000.
Contributors
- Design, development: Jasen Lo
- Reporting: Rosa Cartagena
- Editing: Bedatri D. Choudhury, Sam Morris
- Digital editing: Evan Weiss, Caryn Shaffer
- Social media editing: Erin Gavle, Caryn Shaffer
- Photography: Anwar Abdul-Qawi
- Audio: Christopher McPherson, Sue Riffe, Nils-Olof Jerling, Stanislas Wroza.