����APP

"Know your subject" is an oft-recited mantra of the photography world. And after two years of trying to capture a picture of a Carolina Chickadee hanging upside down, Linda Hoopes had certainly become well acquainted with hers.

"It was amazing to get to know an animal has a sense of humor," Hoopes says. One chickadee dropped seeds on Hoopes's head as she refilled the birdfeeder in her Greenwood, Indiana, yard; another photo-bombed a picture Hoopes was trying to take of a cardinal.

The chickadee here was searching for a snack in Hoopes's yard on a snowy February day when the photographer finally managed to snap a shot of the inverted bird from her study window.

This image was a Top 100 photo from the 2012 ����APP Magazine Photography Awards. To see all of the photos, click .