bird-house flower

almost all of this post was drafted by the end of july of last year. but now, reading it, i had to edit it substantially. i will try to think that now i strive harder at polishing my wordy deed. i have this print on my closet door. there aren't many there because of my notorious lack of will to make prints. i have more closets than prints. this little piece is a little abstract for the state of my photo mind at the time. it now reminds me of a flower that would bud in tim burton's universe. sometimes i am not quite sure why i frame a scene. it may be as simple as some detail prodding my fancy. usually later, in reviewing a photo at home, i pretend i see the petrified monkey. the revelatory moment arrives when photo-shopping the shit out of the photo makes me realize that i have not improved it as much as i could have by a more careful composition. i am repeatedly amused by the extravagance of the bird house design; five stories, really!? my dear memphis birds, wait till they foreclose on your sorry feathery ass. on that unusually cold, partly cloudy february afternoon, i remember my hands barely gripping the camera as i roamed shelby farms to test my new, pre-owned lens, the 135mm f/2.8. i imagine that this is my most restrictive lens but each time i succumb to the idea of taking it as my only lens for the day i end up surprised again how joyfully creative equipment limitations can be. shelby farms, memphis, tn, february '07 after months of putting this post on the blog back burner i decided to tack on another photo i'd taken here in washington. i was thinking of diptych-ing them up but i think that the first photo packs a stronger punch alone. there is a story to be forgotten here. apparently a house-less (homeless ?) bird at a manastash ridge trail-head, ellensburg, wa, november, 2010 both photos were inadvertently sifted through my 135mm lens. the lower one was purposefully vignetted to draw the eye in to the bird. in this case, the lens was too perfect optically for the artistic expression.