2024 Duck Stamp Contest

Remember this: Talent can win more than once. Reading the directions are important.

Every year I follow the United States Fish and Wildlife Duck Stamp Competition. I usually follow Kira Sabin and her process as she selects the duck of choice to paint and her wins and struggles for getting to final shippable submission. She has sat as a judge for the juvenile duck stamp competition and provides excellent input. 

At first glance, you understand this is a lump of 300 or so entries that are of different levels of artistic ability and growth. In good purpose, giving someone the opportunity to attempt, and try again another day, is a learning curve of how not to give up but to come back to the drawing board and try again after improving one's skills as an artist, more so a wildlife artist.

Time and practice can cure a lot of problems. 

With that being said, a lot of the submissions were probably cut due to not reading the requirements. 

In the instructions, it stated something to the effect that you could choose from the migratory fowl, but you had to put in the conservation aspect and the habitat. Alot of these are migratory fowl swimming or suspended on water with some sprigs of grass. Its starts looking like a Sears portrait studio photo shoot. 

It views, "I am a beautiful duck, watch me swim."

2025 Winner by James Hautman 

Three Buffleheads

Here are some entries I wanted to review:

This image provided light and color and action with the above-below water line visuals. There is a hint of the cattails in the background. 

Several of these were hyper-realistic but lacked the conservation and habitat or action.

This image was camera worthy for realism but was portraiture with no story behind it.

This was a nice little photo with the underwater foot and bubble with the ripple of the reflection.

These two entries were cool neutral but still lacked conservation and habitat.

I thought this entry dabbled in the folklore and stop action imagery but had a suggested story, migratory fowl on the borderline of human habitation and industry. It looked intentionally different visually.

This entry was a great action shot with complimentary background.

These two entries I adored for the attention to detail and how much work it must have took.

This little entry right here was different. It is different to me because here you have the known and unknown where Conservation isn't always right there in your face. 

The questions to ask are:

Why is there a decoy present?

Is the decoy implemented for wildlife conservation science or active hunting?

What happens if the little fowl disappears forever from the landscape due to over hunting, disease, or limiting factors that will cause there to only be the remnants of floating fowl decoys that will drift till they get caught up in the mud, moor themselves in the grasses, or sink to the depths?

Will there be another image like this for the future or will this be a reminder reaching out from the past that illustrates the loss we will have as a country when a political pen swipes a paper and slowly but surely rubs it out like No 2 lead on paper? Because of revenge? Retribution? 

It is quite an image to ponder on. You travel from pristine, beautiful healthy fowl to what if it were to all end tomorrow?

These online events and competitions can bring people to love it and study on the greater ethos of Conservation and those creatures and landscapes within it and to those people that wake up and go to sleep every night with its past, present, and future always on their minds.

Go ahead and put it on your calendar for next year, practice and save up that entry fee. You will not regret it!

If you would like to view images click the link: 

2025 Federal Duck Stamp Contest Entries | Flickr

Federal Duck Stamp Contest & Event Information | U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

Adieu!

Footnote: All images are subject to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service copyright. Images used solely to support contest and spread awareness of wildlife conservation, conservation law, and public service awareness through education and learning.

The State of the World

 

Remember this: There is always room for improvement even in the current Global climate.

Social media allowed the world to keep up with the truth, lies, propaganda and rhetoric at mercurial speeds of different subjects and topics. People, put in power by vote or other, has become the bane of existence for countrymen around the world. The power elected by vote, or power grab have unscrupulously besieged nations with the adjective of our time: Absurdity. The world entered an Age of Absurdity that could rival Alice in Wonderland. The people following in behind this are drunk off of the Wine of Folly that Dionyses himself could not have squeezed from a grape cluster. 

Not unlike the novel, The Counte of Monte Cristo, you have a person in power fueled by his need to avenge himself at any cost; for he has been done a great wrong. If you have ever read this piece of literature, you find our good character, Edmond Dantes, set on the path of avenging false accusation and his subsequent incarceration in the French Chateau d'lf, against himself by his beloved friend, Fernand de Morcerf. 

There are people in this life that can't handle being turned on. The Would-be Sage would tell you to choose who you have around you carefully to remind you that social circles can influence your character and destiny. You do not want to suffer the fate of the unlucky, or unfortunate person.  When you have someone making decisions on your behalf without your input, you could be subject to the outcome of whatever that decision is and suffer the consequence in a most painful and violent way. Imagine if the leader does this and you get the brunt of it, how do you think you are going to feel? Trust is a very hard thing to get back once it is lost. Some people throw trust right out the window with little care of the boomerang effect it has.

Why do I bring this topic up on this particular page? 

The behaviors of one followed by the many have become a Great Nothingness that wants to gobble up the world as we know it. It is spilling over into the dominion of the hunter, the fisherman, the hiker, game warden, park ranger, traveler, camper, naturalist, animal activist, botanist, anyone who loves a national or state park, anyone living in the vein of an indigenous spirit, and so on. 

This is an army of people. We pay our state dues to government agencies to have a privilege that is a God given right, along with water. We know it is limited and thus require someone to monitor our intentions to make sure we do right by ourselves, our kids, and the Natural World. Greed and apathy are not options.

So yeah. I am making it my business-unasked and unannounced. I have seen a mass of videos, writings, news reports and the concerned citizen reporting the ever-spiraling news around the Natural World's present state. The bulk of this is influenced by human activity. We live in a stratum of existence where each level is living in its own bubble of affairs with little thought to the effect it has on the other. Within those bubbles are entities inflicting harm based on petty childish lick-backs. 

Power is great but can lose itself when over-extended by fear of being powerless. We must think of what drives the need to seek power and how power can go unchecked and out of control to become a destructive force. 

Do we have to get to a point where we are sitting in the rubble of our own existence before we think it might be a good idea to stop and reassess the trajectory that humanity is going?

The next question should be: where is the character of Jacopo when he faces Edmond on the road he is following? Who are these people that appear to let the misguided soul bent on revenge to destroy his own reputation, good standing, and legacy? Why do they not step in and make reason and commonsense a stop-pause to the potential devastation that there is no back-tracking from?

This is what Jacopo had to say to redirect Edmond from his own disaster:

Jacopo: "I understand you are mad."

Edmond: "My enemies are falling into my traps perfectly."

Jacopo: "Mad your Grace for ignoring this. You have a fortune, a beautiful woman who loves you. Take the money, take the woman, and live your life. Stop this plan. Take what you have won." 

Edmond: "I can't!"

Jacopo: "Why not?"

(Lots of stares)

Jacopo: "I am still your man Zatarra. I swore an oath to protect you. I will protect you even if it means I must protect you from yourself."

If you are a person that votes, now is the time to recognize that what you hold dear is in jeopardy.

 

We need more Jacopos.

Jacopo: "I swear on my dead relatives-and even the ones who are not feeling to good-I am your man forever!"

Adieu!