Hopefully by the time you read this, we will be in Ballarat for the weekend. Big family shindig.
Deng Ming-Doa has a seveal lines of poetry about location.
Just by choosing where you stand
You alter your destiny.
Now, I suppose, from a western thought process it can be a bit too literal. As in where you live, where you stand polictally, how you see the world about you.
Yet, it has been my experience that if you change where you live, life doesn’t radically change.
Yet at another level, each choice we make does alter and affect how we live. Same for photography.
Which camera? If I make a change of brand, will my work improve, 10%? 25%? perhaps 50%? Or will I just have more fun playing with the new toys?
As Deng goes on to write, “there are no double-blind studies on my life”. Each choice I make be it lens, or camera, location, subject, lighting, or time of day brings with it its own magic. Each study of we take is of course a choice of so many options.
The delight is being there and seeing it all unfold, and having the vision to bring it to share.
I had been waiting for this female Australian Shelduck,(Formerly Moutain Duck), to follow her mate as he took off to the other side of the pond. I suppose I expected the usual, head out, wings up.
But my location on ground gave me a new view of this lovely duck in action
Birds as Poetry —— Just because I WANDER - --doesn't mean I'm LOST 
Our choices matter! But as you say, don’t often change any thing radically!
A different and fascinating look at the Shelduck on departure, David!
Hope you had a great time in Ballarat!
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G’day David,
Tis, a complex thing making life choices. So as we poke our toes in the creative waters its an even more challenging moment. I think much of it comes from people excpecting the same comfortable standard of work for every shot.
Bit like the muso who after 20 years of playing the same hit tires of hearing it one more time. 🙂
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An amazing photograph, just love the color and the action. 🙂
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Thank you Sandra, I was a bit surprised when I viewed the resuit and it was now very abstract
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It is somehow a photograph of the essence of the bird – so beautiful and almost abstract.
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Hello Eleanor, yes the abstract feel was what attracted me. I was anticipating just another duck takes off shot. Had I sat there waiting for this result, I’d have never achieved it.
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Just goes to prove we have to be present in any moment. Could have been easy to roll over in bed, staying there, with thoughts of its just the same, same duck,same pond,same take off. But chaos as it were, often yields surprises. Lovely colourful shot placed nicely above a mystic horizon tells us enough literally but then the flutter, pose and bands of horizon do indeed throw us some leeway into the abstract. Gives us, the viewer, somewhere to drift off to.
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