Jake at Goldstream Provincial Park, Victoria, BC. Photo by Mike Ashbee.

Growing up in Washington, DC, I was fascinated by the backyard birds that would come to our feeders. Thanks to a happenstance science project at school, I started learning more about them, and began participating in bird counts at school and on weekends. It certainly didn't earn me any points in the "cool kid" category, but I kept at it all through college, and developed a bit of reputation as a result: not a month into my first year, the dorm room phone rang, with a stranger on the other end asking to speak to "the bird guy" in West Hall (a yellow-rumped warbler had hit her window and she wanted to make sure it was okay, which it was). At the same time I was developing an interest in photography, starting with traditional black and white prints in the darkroom. It occurred to me that combining photography with birding could be a way to unite two things I was passionate about, but realistically, I was a college student at the time, focused on my studies and without the spare cash to purchase the required gear.

I started photographing birds in earnest in 2014, making a few trips down to Florida with some rented equipment and eventually purchasing a camera and lens second-hand. Things took off from there, and I've been behind my camera ever since. Whether I'm in a local park with the friendly black-capped chickadees, or in the mountains of Costa Rica looking for quetzals and rare tanagers, I try to create images that convey to the viewer just what I see in birds, and why I think they're so special. To me, birds truly are living works of art, and bird photography is at its best when it captures those same qualities, the enduring beauty and timeless wonder that keeps drawing us to birds. My goal, at the end of the day, is an image that never loses its "wow" factor, something that instantly explains, without words, why I pressed the shutter button in the first place.

I hope you enjoy my work, and find these birds as captivating as I do.

Jake B. Levin, Ph.D.