Patrick Rummans
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I have always known that birds would be my passion in life. Even now, just holding a pigeon in my hands and breathing in the musky smell of its feathers takes me back to my childhood and the days when my relationship with birds was indelibly dyed into the fabric of who I would always be. I am completely and utterly smitten, and can never get my fill of them.
My parents raised me, my older brother and a younger sister, in central Montana on a farm 10 miles from the nearest town and at least 2 miles from the nearest neighbor. An enormous spring-fed creek bordered our property and a 100 foot tall, quarter mile long cliff banked it into a right angle behind the house. It was heaven.
I was raised as a hunter and spent a lot of time pursuing birds. The hunting led to taxidermy and eventually to me being one of the top bird taxidermists in the world. All during that time I kept, bred and raised a myriad of species in enormous aviaries that surrounded my home. As my business and I grew older, my perspective changed and I hunted less. I acquired birds that had died of natural causes from various breeders around the country, and eventually stopped hunting altogether. Good fortune shone on me and I became involved with doing feather work for animatronics in the Movie and TV industry. It became my main line of work and many things changed for me. In 2005 I worked on a Movie project that took me to Australia for six months, and it was there that Photography became my new obsession. I realized then that I had hunted because I wanted to get closer to birds and understand them on every level. Taxidermy was my way of creating art with birds, and preserving that beauty forever. Photography allowed me to do all of that without causing any harm. It was an epiphany – a where-have-you-been-all-my-life moment!
I am immensely grateful for what my past has taught me. Who I am now, is because of who I was – we have no perspective without experience.
2007 is barely my 2nd year as a photographer, and I have so very much to learn But I am deeply satisfied with the journey so far, and excited by all the possibilities that await me.
