This is Bird Note.

Conservation photographer Nopadal Paotong says that if you go out to take pictures of birds,

you shouldn't just aim to take an eye-catching photo.

My thing, what different in my approach is that I know the subject I photograph.

I like to watch the animal I photograph, and sometimes I would rather watch them in photograph, damn it.

By spending long hours and photo blinds and even sleeping in them overnight,

Nopadal has become deeply familiar with some populations of greater sage-grouse.

To deploy the animal, recognize each one of them when I look at their face because they have

different marking in their face, missing a few pieces of feather from fighting.

When dealing with rare and declining wildlife, keeping the well-being of the species in mind is crucial.

I think you should care about your photograph. You should care about what happened to the bird,

why there's so few of them out there, you know. And that will make you much better for

tougher, make you much better conservationist. Conservation images can alert the public to a problem,

and I want my photograph to alert people to the problem, and point to the solution.

And he wants to help cultivate the next generation of photographers to keep the mission going.

That'd be my ultimate goal to inspire younger people to do what I do because I can't do this forever.

I had a girl who was probably in 10 years old sent me a letter saying she

wanted to be a photographer because of me, and she will continue doing conservation work because

she believed what she does would make different. That mean a lot to me.

Learn more about Nopadol Palatong's Photography on our website, birdnote.org.

I'm Connor Gehran.