Honolulu Zoo
It was a very warm Sunday afternoon at the Honolulu Zoo in the mid 1980s.
This was taken on the large, park-like front lawn. Many families were having picnic lunches.
Someone was throwing handfuls of popcorn to the pigeons. There was an enormous number of the birds. Several hundred, at least. Maybe five hundred. Every time the corn was thrown almost the entire flock would startle, fly up about ten feet, "cooing" very loudly and excitedly. Then settle back to earth to eat their prizes. But even louder than their cooing was the startling, rustling sound of their flapping wings. Maybe angel wings sound like that.
Loud cooing and very serious flapping. The entire group rising as one and then settling back to the ground, rhythmically about every 15 seconds. Over and over and over. It was mesmerizing. Startingly white.
I shot into that amazing cloud almost blindly, letting the camera autofocus the 70-210mm zoom lens at full zoom, knowing it would lock on something, somewhere in that fluttering mass. Otherwise focusing was impossible. I was hoping to get a solid wall of bird bodies. I shot 4 frames of Kodachrome 64.
Three frames came out just as I had hoped. In the fourth, the "cloud" parted for an instant and the camera also imaged the little boy in the red shirt.
I never noticed him until I saw the slides weeks later. He was nowhere near the birds when the shot was made. He was 30-50 feet behind them, sitting there with his family. But the long lens compressed the distance and he looks like he's among them, with a look of awe, mouth wide, appearing to be part of that amazing scene.
Sometimes we get lucky.
Rich
It was a very warm Sunday afternoon at the Honolulu Zoo in the mid 1980s.
This was taken on the large, park-like front lawn. Many families were having picnic lunches.
Someone was throwing handfuls of popcorn to the pigeons. There was an enormous number of the birds. Several hundred, at least. Maybe five hundred. Every time the corn was thrown almost the entire flock would startle, fly up about ten feet, "cooing" very loudly and excitedly. Then settle back to earth to eat their prizes. But even louder than their cooing was the startling, rustling sound of their flapping wings. Maybe angel wings sound like that.
Loud cooing and very serious flapping. The entire group rising as one and then settling back to the ground, rhythmically about every 15 seconds. Over and over and over. It was mesmerizing. Startingly white.
I shot into that amazing cloud almost blindly, letting the camera autofocus the 70-210mm zoom lens at full zoom, knowing it would lock on something, somewhere in that fluttering mass. Otherwise focusing was impossible. I was hoping to get a solid wall of bird bodies. I shot 4 frames of Kodachrome 64.
Three frames came out just as I had hoped. In the fourth, the "cloud" parted for an instant and the camera also imaged the little boy in the red shirt.
I never noticed him until I saw the slides weeks later. He was nowhere near the birds when the shot was made. He was 30-50 feet behind them, sitting there with his family. But the long lens compressed the distance and he looks like he's among them, with a look of awe, mouth wide, appearing to be part of that amazing scene.
Sometimes we get lucky.
Rich
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