Purple Martin Photos

All photos are copyright (c) Joe Dellinger.

You may use these for nonprofit educational purposes; just credit them back to me, please, and don't remove the comments embedded in the image. I primarily took these for a friend to use for artistic reference purposes, so if you're also planning to use them for references for works of art, please check with me first.

Most of these photos were taken using an Astrophysics ``Traveler'' astronomical telescope at prime focus. Optically it works very well as a camera lens, and is much less expensive than an equivalent camera lens would be. Real professionals don't like using astronomical telescopes for wildlife photography, though, because there is no aperture control and no autofocus. Aperture control can be jury-rigged with suitably opaque cardboard, scissors, and tape. Action shots without autofocus means trying to only hit the shutter when a bird is crossing through the field of view in focus. Good pinball reflexes are helpful for not wasting too much film.

Purple Martins

Most of these were taken at my father's house in Duncanville, Texas.


Purple martin links


Go look at some other bird photos of mine.