pigeons Print

Something caught my eye about this picture after I brought it home to my computer. I would have been thrilled with it even if I had shot it in film and developed it in my old darkroom. I had to do very little to this picture almost nothing. In fact I made sure I did only the bare minimum that you see here, because I wanted to be able to brag about how little I had to do to it. I wanted to be able to say that it was perfect from the beginning, with nothing needing to be done to enhance or make the colors bolder (thereʼs very little color. I might put up a black and white version. Yes I think I will.) But I thought it also being almost perfect, not needing anything to enhance it, you would think of it as the miracle that I do. Does that matter? It might. It adds to the story. Without that thereʼs really not much of a story. What photographer doesnʼt like to photograph wild birds? Even if they are just pigeons. We do it all the time. But we donʼt often get good photos of random birds taken on the off-chance. I was sitting in my car, doing what? I donʼt remember. But Iʼm glad I looked up and scanned the sky. Then before I knew it, something startled the pigeons. I kept shooting, not even looking in the view finder but I kept the button down and I was lucky to capture it almost from the beginning. The first shot of most of them in the air, but still grouped together is the best, probably. I just sized it and upped the resolution. And then I sharpened it. Thatʼs really not much. There was some blue in the sky so I saturated the sky just a little, just that little patch of blue there in the lower right corner. When I did that the reflection in the window turned blue also. You probably wonʼt have the same response, but you might. Even the telephone wires and power lines add something. Of course what comes to mind is musical staff paper and notes on the strings. But thatʼs a cliche by now. And itʼs not that anyway. Itʼs the composition, all of the different elements just come together to make a perfect whole. And if you go singling out its parts there is beauty and something satisfying in the some of the parts, I have noticed. The house is a historic old home of the Lewis Family, no called the Lewis House/Hank Williams Museum, on Main Street in Oak Hill, near downtown. The last house before the businesses and stores. What I didnʼt do to this photo is the real surprise. Apparently I got the exposue right for most of the sequence. i didnʼt lighten it or darken on the computer. The composition is quite something, but subtle. Again, an accident. I was just doing what I do. I shoot birds.