Ah, the lust for information [with a correction]

[pecunium]

That Icon is sort of about this picture.



Most of you have probably seen it before, I put it up when [former SFWA VP Howard Hendrix] called people who gave things, they had created, away on the internet, "Pixel-Stained Techno-Peasants."

But I didn't know what kind of bird it was. Last week I bought a book on the remainder table at a local bookshop (Seasons in the Desert a naturalist's notebook by Susan J. Tweit). It's a collection of essays on various of the plant and animals, with illustrative sketches.

One of the essays was on The Curvebilled Thrasher. The picture is sort of drab, but the description made me sit up and say, "I know that bird!"

Color: Buff gray all over, with white throat and darker mottling on breast; bird's eye startling bright yellow or orange

That last line was what gave it away, because the eyes are stunning.

How does that relate to the Icon (and props to bifemmefatale for making it, and the other shot of the bee's butt, which I used in the last post)?

Because they are similar stories. I was heading to the Library in Sierra Vista, about a year ago this time, and I was shooting some shots of cactus, as I walked through the desert. I looked up and saw the bird.

At which point I starte to stalk him. A slow approach, keeping the sun behind me, and maneuvering to where I could get a pleasant pattern of the brances (because there was no way to get all of the branches out of the foreground.

With insects in flowers, I tend to be shooting the flowers, when they show up, and with the same sort of change in focus, I try to keep them in the frame, and guess where the focal plane is going to be when they leave the flower. Bees are about as easy at it gets, because they tend to float in front of the flower for a moment. Hover bees are a little harder. Someday I'll manage to get one of them I really like.

Comments

[greystroke.livejournal.com]

Very nice ...

[pnh.livejournal.com]

The "pixel-stained techno-peasants" line wasn't Andrew Burt. Burt couldn't come up with a phrase that vivid if his life depended on it.

It was former SFWA VP Howard Hendrix, a man who, while wrong on some of these issues, at least has a brain and some real writing talent.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Ah, the perils of memory; filtered with subsequent drama. My mistake.

TK

[batwrangler.livejournal.com]

This composition works for me in a bunch of ways: I like the multi-level framing from the out-of-focus V of branches to the semi-circle of in-focus branches; the way the curve of the branches works with the curve of the beak; and particularly the way the beak and the thorns resonant with each other; the orange eye poppong against the complimentary blue sky is a bonus. Thanks for sharing it.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I like it a lot, it's one of my favorite bird pictures, from the repetitious patterns of the branches, and the shocking piece of color which the eye gives in the moody effect of the shades of blue and gray, to the simple lack of anything actively alive but the bird (and the contrast of smooth feathers to rough bark).

It's a very moody piece.

Perhaps I shall make an icon (it's not that I dislike them, I'm just lazy).

TK