We can call this "Accidental Art", I suppose. The intent, when I shot this, was to capture the moment of liftoff, something I failed to do. But when I saw what I captured I was struck by the beauty of it in its incompleteness. Nothing purposefully cropped, except perhaps up a little from the bottom to balance what I had. Scratches added to break up the monotony of the open areas while, hopefully, giving a feeling of motion or disruption.
I'm thankful that it's come across the way I wanted and am thankful to those who have taken the time to comment. And a special thanks to Jane (MeMex2) for the constant encouragement as I try to figure out what exactly "art" is and how to make it.
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You can’t quite hear the “whoosh” of the wings, because they’re just out of frame. We’re left with just the quiet in that split second before the wings reverse and flap again. The timing here is exquisite – something I think is a touchstone of good photography. We can set up marvelous shots and get everything just so, but the little moments, like this, are what make a photograph stand apart, to me. The engineer in me loves the pattern in the wood, both the grain and the construction. The inept photographer in me likes that single green leaf. The detail on the feather is fascinating, mostly because of the lack of symmetry in the markings. But still I’m mostly fascinated by this wonderful, permanent suspension of the bird – it is in flight, but forever just right there. One of those neat tricks of a photograph.
So often in photography the real decisive moment is actually the frame before, or the frame after, THE moment that most photographers would think of as the perfect one. Something about to happen, or as in this case something that has just happened. That's a wonderful thing about photography as a medium: you can depict the 'moment-and-a-half' so well. You never see a painting or a sculpture (or a novel or a poem) that offers its audience a view of an event that's apparently so negligently depicted as to be almost missed, and get away with it. The complete bird is all the better illustrated in your picture by not being complete. The viewer soars with the bird here, which is much more fun and inspiring than is sitting around pecking a few seeds. The texture is apt enough too; it is a subliminal nudge for the viewer in the direction of perfect imperfection. And yet, the photographic rendering of the bird's tail feathers is actually quite high-fidelity. Which proves as well that you don't have to be blurry to be artistic! Here it's the concept that's 'blurry', intentionally so, and to great effect. Lovely photograph. Thank you.
This is one of my two favorites in the challenge. The bright bird feathers evoke the idea of freedom to leave undesired circumstances, while the wood grain patterns provide an anchor to mundane reality. Dark background is uniform enough to simplify the image, allowing us to focus on the bird and dried leaf/twig. Scratchy texture provides a sort of graphic interest, but may not have been necessary.
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