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Damon S. Calderwood and Richard A. Bold visited me in 1990 enquiring about an electronic triggering device that could fire a camera by a bird stepping on a tiny platform. I had years earlier used it successfully to photograph seabirds on Reef Island in the Queen Charlotte Islands (Haida Gwaii) while in the company of several Canadian Wildlife Service biologists/scientist. Damon and Rick wanted to use it on a planned trip to South America.

I quickly learned that Damon had a passion for photographing birds and when he planned a trip to Dawson City in the Yukon in 2003 and 2004 I loaned him a custom-made extremely powerful high-speed strobe. One plover species that he photographed was the American Golden Plover. Damon and I often talked and I told him to try and capture more than a single element in the image (such as a bird sitting on a tree branch). In the above photo, he has at least 4 elements – the camouflaged adult on the tundra, the babies, an egg – and the bird snapping at an an annoying gnat – something that I discovered when editing the many pictures.

In 2006 my company published Damon’s book ‘Flights of Fantasy Photographing North American Birds’.