In recent years, local photographer Forrest Willey entered the Indiana Agriculture photo contest.
There are four categories: Agritourism, Conservation, Faces of Agriculture and On the Farm. Two winners are selected from each category along with two winners overall.
To be considered, the photo had to be taken in the state by an Indiana resident. The photos were evaluated by a panel of independent judges based on creativity, composition and category representation.
For the first time this year, Willey was among the winners.
His photo, “Lover’s Quarrel,” was chosen one of the two winners in the Conservation category. It features a male summer tanager squawking at a female in a tree.
Willey said he entered the same photo in the contest last year and received a form rejection letter within two weeks of his submittal.
“To me, the fact that the picture didn’t win last year and then this year was picked as one of the 10 winners out of over 400 entries was kind of mind-blowing,” he said.
The judge this year must have liked his photo more than the judge in 2021, he said.
“I was pretty excited to get it,” he said of receiving an email notifying him about being one of the winners. “It was kind of funny. On the same day I got the announcement from winning the contest, I actually signed paperwork on a new truck. I was riding high pretty good there.”
On Aug. 4, Willey and the nine other winners were recognized during a ceremony at Normandy Barn at the Indiana State Fairgrounds in Indianapolis. Each winner received a certificate from Indiana Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch and Indiana State Department of Agriculture Director Bruce Kettler.
“The first thing she said to me whenever I walked up to shake her hand was ‘Boiler up,’” Willey said of fellow Purdue University graduate Crouch. “I had my university hat on.“
Crouch told Willey his photo was fantastic and he had done a great job with it. He was joined at the ceremony by his wife, Jill Willey, and their children, Eva, 6, and Alan, 3.
Willey said the photo was taken in June 2021 near the shelter house trail on Skyline Drive in Brownstown. He was out there looking to get a picture of that exact species of bird. The male summer tanagers are bright red, and the females are orange/yellow in color.
“Their song sounds a lot like a robin,” he said. “That day, I was looking for them because I like the way their feathers look on foliage that time of the year.”
That morning, he had been watching a female summer tanager darting in and out of the brush, and he whistled at her to try to get her to come out.
“I actually got quite a few pictures of her just by herself,” Willey said. “But somewhere in the middle of that, that male, I guess, got jealous because she was paying me attention and not him. He came down and started squawking at her, and I just got lucky. I got the picture.”
At that point, he said he knew he had a really good shot.
“To me, there’s no real question about that one,” he said. “I remember it was part of a burst of about five photographs. I remember the burst where the male was just barely out of frame. I had a wingtip, and then I had two or three more of him kind of hovering there calling at the hen. That one was definitely the best having his wings all outstretched and everything.”
Since it was overcast that day, Willey had to bump up the ISO on his camera fairly high to stop the motion.
“I remember it took a lot of processing to get all of the noise grain out of the picture. That actually almost took as long as the actual capture of the shot, I’d say,” he said. “Catching a picture like that is just a lot of being in the right place at the right time, but what kind of sells it is the editing and whatnot you do after the capture.”
Once the photo was just how Willey wanted it, he decided to enter it in the photo contest last year. When it didn’t win, he still liked the photo enough that he chose to give it another try this year.
That was a good decision.
“I was pretty happy,” he said. “I had a cousin a few years ago that won it, and then I’ve had a couple of friends that are active in the photography community here locally that have won in years past. Actually, I even had a former co-worker win it last year from Seymour. Whenever I saw her name on there, I thought, ‘Well, heck. I didn’t even know she took pictures.’”
This year’s winning photographs will be displayed in the lieutenant governor’s Family of Business offices in Indianapolis. Crouch also is the state’s secretary of agriculture and rural development.
“Each year toward the end of June, I eagerly anticipate reviewing the hundreds of beautiful photos submitted for the Indiana Agriculture photo contest,” she said in a news release from ISDA. “The photos selected as winners represent Hoosier traditions and agriculture so well. I want to give my greatest congratulations to the 10 selected winners for sharing their talent with us.”
Kettler said the beauty of agriculture and farming is immense, and he loves how talented Hoosiers are able to showcase agriculture in the best way with this contest.
“This year, we received nearly 400 submissions, and even though our judges selected only 10 winners, we look forward to showcasing hundreds of the submitted photos throughout the year in other ways with our department,” he said.
When asked if he will enter the contest again next year, Willey said he has around 20 pictures he thinks would have a chance at winning.
“I just try to pick out the ones that I think a judge might notice first of all to have good artistic merit,” he said. “One thing I’ve noticed is that bold subjects seem to win more frequently than nuanced subjects. Whenever I pick a picture to enter, I look at a lot of things that I like in a picture but then maybe try to see outside of that into what might get noticed so it doesn’t just get glossed over by somebody that’s having to pour over hundreds and hundreds of entries.”