ShareThisA little more than a decade ago, outdoors photography was as much about luck as it was about skill.
Few hunters and fishermen actually bothered carrying cameras into the field, and the ones who did often used those cardboard disposable models.
Even at $9, those things were a rip-off -- and if you managed to get one good picture out of the 28 chances you had on a roll of film, you were, like I said, lucky.
But technology has changed all that.
Everything is digital now -- and with that wonderful window you have on most digital cameras, you can keep snapping photos until you get one that looks just right.
Today's cameras are small, lightweight, easy to carry and, perhaps most important, affordable.
For all those reasons, you're hard-pressed to find a hunter or fisherman these days who doesn't carry a camera -- and with so many cameras in the field, we're getting a better pictorial glimpse of the great outdoors than ever before.
Photos of bald eagles in flight used to be so rare that they always ended up in a frame and often ended up in print, either in a magazine or a newspaper.
But today, they're so common that people actually delete them from their desktops, knowing they can snap more tomorrow.
My grandfather, Clifford Brasher, caught 3-pound crappie and an 80-pound grouper that I never saw because no camera was available. My first 6-pound large-mouth bass is just a vague memory because I didn't have a camera, either.
But today, most fishermen (myself included) snap photos of every fish they catch that's even remotely worth bragging about.
The photo trail is so thorough these days that stretching the truth, or downright lying, has become sort of a lost art among anglers. Some will say that's not necessarily a good thing.
But on the upside, I believe the growing popularity of amateur photography has actually aided the practice of catch-and-release.
Bragging about their catch is so important that some anglers once felt the need to keep impressive fish because it was the only way they could show them off. But now with a camera in the glove box of almost every boat on the water, many of those same big fish are being caught, photographed and released back into the water.
Conservation officials have even come up with a catchy slogan for the new practice. They call it CPR for "Catch. Photograph. Release."
The increased number of cameras in the field have not only helped people show off their fish and game, they've helped some outdoorsmen finally give people a better idea of why we enjoy being outdoors even when the fish aren't biting, the deer aren't moving and the ducks aren't flying.
When I come home from a deer hunt, it's hard for me to adequately describe just how beautiful the bobcat was that spent 15 minutes slinking around beneath my tree stand.
It's hard to explain what it looked like to have thousands of snow geese flying over my duck blind all day.
It's hard to do justice with words to the mating pair of loons I saw on the main body of the lake while moving from one fishing spot to another.
But with a camera all I have to say is, "Look at this."
(Contact Bryan Brasher of The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Tenn., at brasherb(at)commercialappeal.com.)
