Alan Larson

Georgia, USA

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Alan is an amateur birder and videographer. He enjoys watching the birds that visit his feeder and also the technical aspect of taping them and editing the footage. He has been feeding, watching and taping birds for almost 10 years.

Alan is in the sign business, running a small shop where they cut vinyl to make signs for people's businesses and organizations. He works at two flea markets on the weekends, which gives him time during the week to watch and video tape his feeder, and, of course, to do the editing.

He doesn’t get to see too many different varieties of birds, but the ones he does see (about 18-20 species) he gets on tape. He explains that he has an agreement with the birds - they are welcome to eat as much as they like in exchange for agreeing to be video taped and giving up any rights they may have as regards the use of their image. He says that they are fine with that as most do not have TVs or computers and they don't need much money. However, they do need sunflower seeds, and they get plenty of them at Alan’s; his feeding has grown to be as much as 100 lbs and as many as a dozen suet blocks per month!

Alan uses some high-end prosumer equipment; he has a Canon GL2 and a Sony DCR TRV950. Both are three chip camcorders and he records directly to a hard drive, a FireStore FS4 Pro, - tapeless recording. He uses a G5 Power Mac and FinalCut HD for the editing. He loves his gear although it has taken quite a while to get to where he is now because he has been learning on his own. In 1996, when he started taping birds, he was using regular VHS tape and analog VCR to VCR editing. But now, thank goodness, everything is digital - including him!?
IBC Personal statistics:

• First material posted on 24 May 2005
• Number of videos posted: 49 covering 15 species (0.15%)
• Number of photos posted: 0 covering 0 species (0%)
• Number of sounds posted: 0 covering 0 species (0%)