{"id":2994,"date":"2010-10-20T22:22:08","date_gmt":"2010-10-21T02:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/?p=2994"},"modified":"2011-03-14T15:12:54","modified_gmt":"2011-03-14T19:12:54","slug":"on-writing-well","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/2010\/10\/20\/on-writing-well\/","title":{"rendered":"On Writing Well"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
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On our recent Wyoming trip Denise Ippolito and I spent lots of times creating pleasing fall-color blurs. This image was created with the 70-200mm f\/2.8L IS II zoom lens (hand held at 70mm) with the EOS-1D Mark IV. ISO 50. Evaluative metering +1 1\/3 stop:1\/5 sec. at f\/9 set manually. If you would like to learn to create images like this of a variety of natural history subjects, check out “A Guide to Pleasing Blurs<\/a>” by Arthur Morris and Denise Ippolito. <\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

On Writing Well<\/h2>\n

I received a very nice e-mail yesterday that prompted this blog post:<\/p>\n

Dear Mr. Morris, Due to the pressures of life I am only a sporadic visitor and very occasional contributor to your wonderful sites (including BPN) but I wanted to thank you for all I have learned from your books and websites. Largely because of your instruction and encouragement, I gave my first Photoshop workshop today for the local camera club– a very large and active one. The workshop was very well received – one participant even sent me a thank you email which I have added below. <\/p>\n

I wanted to let you know of another small ripple generated by the well-crafted rocks you lob onto plastic and into cyberspace. As a compulsive wordsmith I also wanted to grab the opportunity to tell you how much I appreciate the simplicity and clarity of you writing. Good, clear writing seems to be an endangered species and paired with your meticulous attention to detail, your writing makes your books and web posts some of the finest instructional materials I have ever found. You can be sure that I am recommending your work to participants in my workshop.<\/p>\n

Thanks again, Caspar Davis Victoria, BC<\/p>\n

The note I received today, from a Notary Public who attended the workshop: Thank you for the session today Caspar. I learned a lot already and I can sure see it’s a long term learning thing. Thanks for your help<\/em>! <\/p>\n\n\n
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I realized early in my career, way back in the late-1980s, that learning to write well can be vitally important for folks wanting to sell their images. Why knock yourself out trying to sell one image to fit someone else’s article when you can sell five or six images at a time and be paid for the article to boot? Early on I wrote extensively for Bird Watcher’s Digest and for Birder’s World. I shall forever be indebted to Mary Beacom Bowers of the former and to Julie Ridl and Mary Katherine Parks of the latter for the help and encouragement that they provided back then with my writing. <\/p>\n

When I write, I try to keep everything simple. Because I read so much when I was a kid, I usually have no problems with clarity, sentence structure, and grammar. My old and good friend Johann Schumacher advised that I should write the way I speak. “Don’t try to use fancy words,” he cautioned, “Be yourself.” Julie Ridl gave me some great advice also: “Include lots of first-person anecdotes in your how-to writing.” I hear their words each time that I sit down at the laptop to write. <\/p>\n

Many folks do not realize that writing is a process; by reading what I write over and over I am able to make it better and better, simpler and simpler, cleaner and cleaner, clearer and clearer. Then if at all possible I will have a friend or two read what I have written and comment on it before it is published. The single biggest error that I see with beginning writers is the need to hang onto every word that they have written. If a word or words or a phrase can be deleted without changing the meaning of a sentence then the word, the words, or the phrase must be deleted… <\/p>\n

I have never taken a writing course in my life. Writing for the most part comes naturally to me, again as a result of my youthful reading habits. For folks interested in improving their writing today I can strongly recommend “On Writing Well” <\/a> by William K. Zinsser. After that you can add “The Elements of Style” (4th Edition)<\/a> by William Strunk and E. B. White. Writing is just like photography; you need to study hard and work at it to get better. Good luck with your writing. <\/p>\n

Shopper’s Guide<\/h2>\n

Here is the gear that I used to create the image in this post. <\/p>\n

Canon 70-200mm f\/4L IS II lens<\/a>
\nCanon EOS-1D Mark IV professional digital camera body<\/a><\/p>\n

If you are considering the purchase of a major piece of photographic gear be it a new camera, a long lens, a tripod or a head, or some accessories be sure to check out our complete Shopper’s Guide.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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On our recent Wyoming trip Denise Ippolito and I spent lots of times creating pleasing fall-color blurs. This image was created with the 70-200mm f\/2.8L IS II zoom lens (hand held at 70mm) with the EOS-1D Mark IV. ISO 50. Evaluative metering +1 1\/3 stop:1\/5 sec. at f\/9 set manually. If you would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[89,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-89","category-educational","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2994\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}