Sometimes You Forget and It's Okay

Doing well.  Post #003.  

It was the very early digital days.  I had gotten the D700 in October, so the first six months or so were cold and grey.  Sometimes you just go for a walk with a camera.  And, what happens is good and healthy and maybe even involves birds.  Fresh air.  Movement.  Wait, what's that.  Oh, upside down in the tree up ahead.  People will think you're strange for standing in the middle of the road pointing a camera up at the bare tree limbs.  However, what is to be found there is wonderful...in monochrome.

Downy Woodpecker shot hand-held with 'H' 300mm F4.5 on D700

I forgot that the camera was set to monochrome.  Classic error.  Fortunately, the Downy Woodpecker in this photo happens to look fantastic in monochrome.  How its body is sandwiched between the branch and the right wing. Once I realized the setting I thought, 'hey, I kind of like that right now.'   

- a quick aside here: what it was like for me to go from shooting manual and waiting for results - which is fine, film is unbeatable - to looking down at the screen to see what I had gotten was a 'quantum' leap.  I was truly speechless when I first started using digital.  The change was beyond words. 

So there we are; in the middle of the road shooting almost directly overhead with five pounds of hand-held camera and lens. What I enjoy here is simply getting a shot.  Any shot.  Now, just a fun shot of upside down bird searching for food inside a dark branch.  Look closely at the talons and the tail feathers. See how they work together to balance the bird and give it sure footing as it leans back then stretches forward and pokes its head in?  Notice how the wings are gathered and focused like a right-to-left tear drop against the tail feathers allowing it to 'press in' and grip to stay in the gravity-defying position?  We'll see this same approach later when we look at the Pileated Woodpecker with it's very impressive size and tail feathers.  You know the perspective is correct because the branches in the background and foreground are growing bottom-to-top.  This photo is not turned on its side.  

Same as above - different branch

Same bird in this photo on a different branch.  The entire body braces against the tree with the tail feathers slightly fanning out in a bit of a 'shoe horn' shape to maximize support for the rapid head movement.  Many feathers together pressed against the tree creates a real firmness to counter the pounding when the woodpecker gets going.  Along the left side of the photo, I enjoy the way the talon is clear against the bark, and the way the beak is sharp against the sky.  It's easy to see the eye.

If I am in an art class, then my eye enters the frame lower-right and climbs the tree to the bird and straight up its tail and back to a hair-pin turn following the black along the back of the skull to the eye and then down to where we are practically shot like a projectile from the sharp beak and into the tree feeling the swift sensation of being the bird knocking against the limb.  My gaze exits the frame along the branch to the top left. 

Viewing 101.  We ask why we like certain photos.  It's because of how the subject is framed.  If the framing isn't pleasing to the eye, the response is repulsion not acceptance.  Why this now?  Because a photo is more than a click that grabs an image.  A photo is a chance to stop time and look closely at a piece of life, of what is going on with the world from a certain perspective.  In my case, birds.  Why the photo?  Beauty. Intrigue. Behavior.  All of the above. 

House Sparrows in bare forsythia just because

This photo is the same day.  Around the corner from the woodpecker.  Just walking and these two stole my heart.  Tell me they are not in conversation.  The 'listening' posture of the bird at top and the 'pleading' almost yearning of the lower bird with the light reflecting in its eye.  Perhaps a kiss in the sunlight?  I dare not be an interloper.  The frame.  By placing them to the right side of the rule of thirds, I allow the left side of the photo to open and breathe to counter the darkness of the birds and branches.  Also, the lower bird extends lower right to upper left and the frame should allow that line to elongate.  And so it does as the lower bird's beak takes us directly to the upper bird's beak, then across the bird's head, and then following both bird and branch, off the tree and out of the frame.  

Downy Woodpecker same as above

In this final shot, I enjoy the way half the bird is cast in shadow; particularly across the face and down along the chest.Also, the staring off into space.  Not at the ground.  I can relate.  The urge to fly?  Simple.  Delicate.  Romantic?  Just a moment in life.  

Something to forget.  It's okay.  

I'm forgetting more these days.  

Be well.  

We'll talk soon.