“When I saw that [New Life] category, that image came right to mind,” he said.
According to Crotty, the picture has a universal appeal.
“There’s both a cuteness factor and a humor factor,” he said. “These little birds, when they’re born, they’re so small. They’re not even an inch long. When you get in close and see all the detail, it brings out their personality in a much larger way.”
Forging a career path
Crotty, who lives in Dayton, Ohio with his wife and two daughters, initially pursued a career in marketing. He worked in various managerial and public relations positions, and even earned a master’s degree in professional communication from Westminster College in Salt Lake City, where he and his wife lived in the late 1990s. But visual art remained his passion.
“I tried to do the whole corporate thing, and it just wasn’t me,” he said. “I always felt there was something within me that wasn’t being utilized or tapped into.”
That conviction strengthened when Crotty was hired by an elevator manufacturing business and assigned to take architectural photographs for use in the company’s promotional materials.
“When I was doing that, I really started thinking, ‘I could do this as a business,'” he said. But it took one more corporate job, a three-month stint with an ad agency after moving back to Dayton in 2002, to convince Crotty he needed a career change.
“I finally had enough,” Crotty said. “I got fed up with working for other people. It was the same thing no matter where I’d go. I thought, ‘Why should I be using my talents to make other people financially successful? I should be using my talents to my benefit.’ Coming to that conclusion is what motivated me to start my own business.”
Crotty said he was brought up to believe that a real career entailed working for someone else, and that job security and benefits were the most important career aspects. His experiences, however, caused him to change his tune.
“I realized, if you have a talent and you stick to it and you follow it to the best of your ability, the monetary rewards, the financial security will come,” he said. “Now I’m finally doing it; I just think I’m about 10 or 15 years late in getting started.”
In 2003, Crotty started his own studio, which he runs full-time, independently.
“A lot of people think it’s a big studio,” he explained. “It’s just me.”
Although he remains partial to nature and landscape photography, Crotty has expanded his lens to business portraits, head shots, architectural shoots, and pretty much anything else.
“I had to diversify my photography quite a bit in order to make a go of the business,” he said. “It really runs the gamut.”
For Crotty, no matter what the subject, but especially for nature landscapes, the intent of the snapshot should be the same.
“A perfect photograph should tell a story,” he said. “It should create a journey that the viewer can follow and use their imagination to actually be drawn into the image.”
Crotty uses technical aspects like angles, lines and lighting to establish a path for the viewer’s eye. He pointed out that unlike painters and drawers, photographers have less flexibility with their art.
“A photographer has to use what’s presented before him or her,” he said. “It’s not only the physical elements or the parts of the composition, but it’s how those parts are arranged… It’s a balancing act, but once you get it you know it.”
As exemplified by the finch photo, the best shots are often unexpected. Crotty said some of his best photographs have come after he’s turned away from the intended subject and noticed something else.
“You just have to be so aware of everything around you and try to let the picture come to you,” he explained. “It’s the ones I’m not looking for that are the best ones.”
His long-term goal is to publish his work, but for the moment, he hopes the award will just generate publicity for his photographs.
“One thing I’ve realized in my line of work is one success leads to another,” he said. “You just keep going after the small successes and they keep building on each other… I’m hoping this will definitely be the case.”
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