Portrait Of A Roseate Spoonbill

2016-11-08roseatespoonbillfinal2994Portrait of A Roseate Spoonbill

Portraits are a way of immortalizing someone, a place, or even a thing. Once the central feature of the portrait is established down on canvas it begins to change, it takes on a new life. One filled with mystery, beauty, intrigue,and perhaps hidden meanings. A common person, place or thing becomes just the opposite. It becomes an object of importance way beyond its everyday appearance and is elevated to a level of grandeur it seldom if ever, attains in the real world.

Still life’s are a prime example of this phenomenon. Take a wicker basket, some fruit and a flat table top and in the right hands you have a Caravaggio. The painting titled Basket of Fruit a still life painted in 1599 was one of the earliest still life’s to gain stature and popularity. These common items sitting on a table today as we walked past them would hardly draw our notice, other than to think maybe it’s time they changed the fruit basket. But when this subject is presented with skill and immense artistic talent by a master painter we have a painting that we can look at for hours and still find interest in it. Just as people have been doing since the 16th century with Basket of Fruit.

The portrait of the Roseate Spoonbill above started out as a simple shot taken late in the afternoon. Here it is in its natural original state before any processing began.

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Not a remarkable image in any way, other than it is often difficult to get these particular birds to sit for you for any length of time. It could be used as a documentation photo of the bird in its habitat but would certainly not be considered an art shot by any means. But using the idea that most any subject matter can attain a more enlightened representation by using the magic of computerized processing and you have an entirely new view of Portrait of A Roseate Spoonbill. One that changes your viewpoint of the bird and hopefully makes you reconsider its original mundane presentation.

I believe that once an image is created it stands on its own regardless of what the creation process was. In this case a drab image was transformed into a vivid exciting image that draws you into it and hopefully gives you pleasure as you take in a Portrait of A Roseate Spoonbill.

Still Life

StillLife5820Forest Scene Yellowstone                    click to enlarge

This is a tricky time to be talking about the weather. You have to watch what you say constantly as the forces that control things are ever on the alert for some rash statement about the current conditions. The process of changing between the seasons must be a fairly stressful time for the cosmos. You’ve got the ones that want it to stay winter because that’s their thing. And then you’ve got the proponents for change, the ones that figure its been cold long enough lets move on into spring. We like those guys the best.

But like I said you’ve got to be very careful when voicing your opinions at this tumultuous time. If the cold guys are still in ascension and you start demanding stuff like “Alright all ready. Enough of this cold crap, I am ready for Spring.” and they hear you, and they’re like having a bad day, pretty soon you’re gonna have a Saskatchewan screamer roaring up your miniskirt and you will regret your poor choice of words.

ON the other hand the spring guys are just waking up, they haven’t had their coffee yet, nobodies turned on CNN or The Weather Channel to see what’s happening, they haven’t been outside yet so it’s a little bit of a process to get them up to speed. But when they do go out and see that there are no flowers started, the ground is still froze, they can’t sit out on the deck and read the paper, check their email, watch the sunrise etc., then things begin to happen. These boys don’t like the cold and when winter starts infringing on their time they get royally cheesed off. Some of them get a little chesty, they’ve been pumping a little iron, eating a little red meat so they puff up some and tend to be touchy as it is. These early risers are more aggressive than the ones sleeping in, they’re the shock troops of spring and they’re kinda looking forward  to a little confrontation with the winter guys. There’s been bad blood between them anyway because of the change over, so soon we have what the Chinese like to call “interesting times”.

That’s why I’m being as careful as I can about what I say and the images I put up right now. I’ve chosen a ‘Still Life’, named because it’s still, not jumping all over the place with excitement and celebration, that is calm and soothing, not too confrontational, letting in a little color, letting these spring guys find their footing as it were, before I start bringing in the ‘Wiggly life” that we all want to see.

Yesterday I may not have been as careful in what I said as I should have been. Maybe I got a little carried away and got affected by sun poisoning, because today when I got up it was snowing again, but really lightly, like the winter guys were kinda losing their stamina. I mean these guys have Got to be getting tired. I think spring is coming on but even so, you got to be careful around them, the winter guys that is, they can still bite you if you don’t watch out. So just a word of warning, if you have to talk about spring, do it quietly amongst yourselves, kind of allude to it rather than being all up in their face with “Hey winter, you suck. You are like so over” and “Hit the road Jack” or ” I can’t wait to get out in my garden again”. Don’t say that one, they really don’t like that one.
Anyway, here’s a still life, wiggly life to follow just as soon as we get rid of those rat-bastard winter guys … Oooh Man, it’s snowing again, Sorry.