Winter Flock

As soon as I saw the local forecast for Bucks County included snow, camera batteries went into their chargers. I have not acclimated well to cold this winter, the temperatures have been too inconsistent. Warm one day (or 3), cold for a day, then warm again.

I can dress for the cold though, for the most part. My biggest issue is cold toes and fingers. It hadn’t stopped snowing yet when I got out this morning. We only had a few inches, but it was enough to make it finally look like winter. I was thinking winter birds today, so I geared up with that in mind.

After a while outdoors, I was beginning to wish I had been more prepared for landscape imagery. Truth is though that I like to concentrate on one genre of work at a time during the winter, so today was birds. The snow fell heavily at times and began freezing to my camera and lens making it difficult to gain access to all of the controls. I had to scrape away ice from my camera to access the ISO button and even the front control dial.

The image below is of a flock of Cedar Waxwings. I like how I can expose to attain a clean white background by composing against the sky. The yellow tail tips of the waxwings add a bit of dramatic color to an otherwise fairly monochromatic piece. I was also pleased to be able to compose to limit overlap of the birds. For the most part, each bird remains a distinct shape.

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Lord of the Flies……

Yesterday I was at Artists’ Gallery in Lambertville, NJ greeting visitors as they came in out of the cold to see the latest work of the 18 member artists. I had a very nice talk with a woman who came in with her husband. It was their anniversary. One of my images reminded her of a passage from the book Lord of the Flies. She was drawn to the piece visually, but it was the connection she made with a particular book passage that solidified her choice to purchase my print entitled Nocturnal Shore.

Great writers can place powerful pictures into reader’s minds the same way visual artists working in 2-D or 3D put powerful pictures in front of viewer’s eyes. But equally true is that powerful pictures can cause one to recall great written passages. I find this relationship between the arts, a consilience of sorts, increasingly interesting.

Nocturnal Shore

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