
.
Black-headed Gull, Chew Valley Lake, Somerset; 27 Sept 2013.
A still life? Really? Well, one way of looking at this is that, since the camera shutter was only open for 1/1600th of a second, it has effectively frozen this instant in the life and doings of this living being – and so it is “Life”, yes, but it is also “Still” – or, more correctly I suppose, “Stilled”! And living things e.g. plants can of course be included in still life assemblages – if their movements are too slow to register in the resulting image.
But the real reason for my calling this a still life is that when I looked at the whole of this image and saw this powerfully down-sweeping wing, I was struck by its beauty, and so cropped the image to make it the main feature – with the bird’s head just peeping into the picture to add a little context. So that, ok, it is a bird in flight, a moving object, but to me it has now become more of a design, or a set piece if you like.
The fundamental difference between this image and a conventional still life is that it is not supported on anything that we can see, like a table top for example. All support here is provided by the whirling and invisible air.
Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window – recommended.
Technique: D800 with 70-300 Nikkor lens at 300mm; 400 ISO; Color Efex Pro 4.
.
.
.
Like this:
Like Loading...