2024—SNAFU or Serendipity?

SNAFU is a condition that I freely admit afflicts me on occasion. I’ve been home from Costa Rica for two weeks now. I love the results of my efforts there, especially the Hummingbird photographs. But, I also captured images of quite a few other birds that I absolutely love. The SNAFU I’m referring to relates to this bird, a Hoffman’s Woodpecker. Until yesterday I didn’t know I’d seen, let alone photographed it. Why did it take me so long? Well, I took these from the balcony on our first afternoon of shooting at the Rancho in Costa Rica. Here’s the SNAFU! While I was shooting, the camera was set to monochrome from a shoot earlier in the day because I failed to return the camera to the correct settings. I only realized my mistake after the bird had flown away. Lucky for me, the Woodpecker returned about an hour later and I captured those images correctly and in color. I grouped all of the Woodpecker images as “Black-cheeked Woodpecker,” half in black and white and half in color. I focused on and finished the color images first but decided I liked the gesture and background in the image above better than the others. Because I shot in RAW, I could easily convert the black and white images to color. As I compared the images, I realized they were two completely different species of Woodpecker. Because both species were new to me, and because the first group displayed as black and white in PhotoMechanic where I catalog and review images before finishing them in Photoshop, I wrongly thought they were the same species. Fortunately for me, this SNAFU went from blunder to serendipity.