You can see a reflection of my house in this jay's eye.
This column appeared in the Recorder and the Gazette on Jan 22 and the Eagle on Jan 25.
Anyone who has ever dabbled in the art of photography will understand that you find yourself at the mercy of your environment. Of course, I am speaking of outdoor photography in this case. Studio photography is an entirely different organism because in that particular endeavor the art lies in manufacturing an environment. If you are outdoors, however, you have to find ways to make due with what you’ve got on any particular day.
Most people might think that a clear blue sky and a bright, shining sun are ideal, but this is not always the case. It really depends on what you are looking for, where you find it and in what direction you happen to be looking in. Sometimes, the bright blue sky is a photographer’s worst nightmare. Bright blue sky on the beaches of Hawaii, no problem. Bright blue sky in the forests of New England, big problem. The contrast between the sunlit side of the trees and the shadows on the other sides can be so harsh that the photograph is unpleasant to look at. Sometimes, the cloudy day is the photographer’s best friend.
I find myself at the mercy of the weather every morning that I sit down to observe the birds at my winter feeders. My house is placed upon the ground at a nearly perfect agreement with the cardinal directions on a compass. The architect who designed the house decided to take advantage of passive solar heating and there are lots of windows that face directly south. Then the decision was made to place a deck on the east side of the house, where the kitchen was also located. Thus, every morning, while sitting at my writing desk with a warm cup of coffee, I gaze out upon the eastern horizon and I am able to watch the sunrise.
This does present certain problems for me when I am trying to take pictures of the birds. Placing the object of interest between the sun and yourself is generally a bad idea. This is why I have positioned my Thinking Chair on the southern edge of my meadow. The sun rises to the east and the morning birds are lit from one side. Then, as the morning progresses, the sun moves behind me and the birds are lit more perpendicularly. Some nice photos can be captured under these conditions.
Over the years I have found that a cloudy day is often the best for photography because the contrast between light and dark areas is minimized. The brilliant colors produced by direct light can be very desirable, but the more sumptuous colors seen on a cloudy day are often even more attractive. One of those days when you can see the sun through high clouds and look directly at it without hurting your eyes is often the ideal day for photography. But, none of us controls the weather.
One of the last pictures I took in 2024 was on a morning with a bright sun in a blue sky. Most of the photos were nice enough, but most of them ultimately found their way into the trashcan on my computer. They were either too harsh, or too “flat” for my liking and they just didn’t make the cut. I remember thinking this to myself as I was taking photos and I realized that I had to shift my thinking. What could I do in these conditions that would take advantage of the wrong sort of lighting? This was going through my mind when a Blue Jay landed on the railing outside and then it suddenly hit me.
On this morning when the sun was shining brightly and I was forced to look at the “dark side” of the birds, there existed a curious opportunity to try something a little artsy. Using the maximum extent of the magnification of my large telephoto lens, I zoomed in on the Blue Jay’s face as much as possible and, to my delight, I discovered that I could actually get a photo of my house. This is because the bird’s eye acted like a convex mirror and allowed me to see not only the outline of my house, but also the white kitchen door and even one of the feeders perched atop a post.
Now that I had an idea it all boiled down to waiting for one particular bird to cooperate in that one particular way that would produce the best combination of position and angle of the head. I must have taken 50 photos before everything came together. The bird lifted its head, paused for an instant, and refrained from blinking just long enough to let me see all of the details that I needed. Click!
I found that I was able to see my own house in the eyes of several different birds of several different species that morning, but the Blue Jay photo ended up being the best of them all. There was one other picture that I was tempted to use because the bright sunlight reflecting off the side of my red house illuminated the “dark side” of the bird with soft red light. This produced an image of a Blue Jay that appeared to be blue and pink, rather than the normal blue and white. This was cute, but not as interesting as the reflection of my house in the bird’s eye.
Thank you to all of you who sent in ideas for future columns. I am in the process of sorting through all of your submissions and figuring out which seasons would be best for which topics. A few of the suggestions would require photos that I don’t currently possess, but that just gives me a list of special projects to work on. So, keep on sending in ideas and I will happily start planning all sorts of forays out into the wondrous and beautiful world upon which we live.