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I completely agree. Traditional close up portrait-ey photos of birds are completely boring to me.
Sure, it takes a lot of skill, patience, research, field craft, experience, and gear to take those impressive photos... but that's it, they might be technically perfect, but often lacking artistically in my eyes.
And that's why I try to look for inspiration elsewhere. If you want to do the same, I suggest looking at wildlife photography contests and looking for those ones that push the boundaries of what's possible.
Pic related: it's a runner up from last year's Nature Photographer of the Year (NPOTY), a black and white photo of cormorants with ICM (intentional camera movement). Take all of your bird knowledge, skill, gear, etc, but add some creativity, and you can get photos like this.
I look through the galleries of contests like NPOTY, WildartPOTY, BirdPOTY (and even order their books) to look for ways to be creative with my bird photography.
