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OK. So a camera isn't exactly a watercolor tool per se, but as an artist that works from photographs, I can tell you that a good camera is essential. I was photographing birds for my own pleasure long before I began painting them. My husband dabbled in photography in the past, so we own a couple of heavy duty (with the emphasis on heavy) Nikon cameras, including a D7100 with a very large lens. Not exactly comfortable to carry around, much less hold steady for any length of time. Besides, I'm not getting any younger!

When I attended wildlife artist Morten Solberg's workshop a few years ago, he recommended the Nikon COOLPIX P900 with which he photographs subjects for his unique artwork that combines realistic birds and animals with abstract settings.

The thought of a smaller, lightweight camera that takes great photos with the ease of a point-and-shoot, a zoom range of 24-2000mm, a long battery life and built-in WiFi was irresistible. After a little begging on my part, my husband purchased one for me. It is now my go-to camera. One of my favorite features is the setting which takes up to 7 shots at approximately 7 frames per second.

That's about as technical as I am going to get... Instead, I'm going to show you with pictures how cool this camera is!

While riding my bike at one of my favorite local parks, I took the above photo from across the lake after hearing the birdsong and spotting that telltale blue speck way off in the distance. "Indigo Bunting at Evening" was inspired by this shot. True, the detail in the photograph isn't great, but I could see enough to capture the essence of the bird.

The first photograph was taken with the camera zoomed in as far as it could go (2000mm with the 83x zoom). In order to give you an idea of the distance between me and this bird, I zoomed back out just a little bit and snapped another picture. Now you can begin to see the context.

Then I zoomed out even further....

Finally, the above image was taken with absolutely no zoom. If you look carefully in the center of the photo, you can see the small circle I drew around the place the Indigo Bunting was perched! (If I had skipped the second and third photos, you probably wouldn't have believed me!) When I heard the Indigo Bunting's song, I turned my head toward the sound and literally saw a blue speck. After that, it was all zoom!

Just for fun, I repeated the process with the order reversed. In this case, I spotted a bird up ahead in the distance rather than hearing it. I had no idea what kind it was but I knew I could find out if I photographed it. (I've circled the bird in the above photo taken with no zoom.)

Of course, I had gotten off my bike in order to take these photographs (I keep my P900 in my bike rack bag), so these pictures are all taken from the same distance. I just zoomed in a little.

And I zoomed in a little more...

Here I have zoomed in as far as I could; my sources tell me this is a Common Grackle.

But wait; there's more!

Remember when I mentioned that one of my favorite features is the setting which takes up to 7 shots at approximately 7 frames per second? The seven hummingbird images above were taken with one press of the shutter button in Bird Watching Scene Mode. The only editing I did to these photos was to crop them for better viewing.

Can you see why I love my Nikon COOLPIX P900? I take it just about everywhere I go!

Photograph. Paint. Love. Repeat.

Update 3/22/24: the P900 has been discontinued and replaced with a P950.