by Kimberly A. Cook (Twitter@ WarriorTales)
Back to the beach! Looking at my pics from our early August beach trip, I’m always surprised with what I see afterwards. Take this normal seagull. I took five pictures of him doing his feather cleaning and then a couple of him/her looking out to sea.
Five. Looking closer at the pictures when I got them on my computer, I noticed one photo of a nice, normal kind of happy looking seagull. Fluffy, pretty, bright colors.
Then I looked at the other four and saw the feather cleaning shot, couldn’t see his/her face. Then when I looked closer at the final three, I spotted this. Cranky seagull. Or is that just my imagination?
Checked the rest of the photos and three of the five are cranky gull. It almost seems like he knows what I’m doing and he’s not happy being a victim of the paparazzi. Maybe he is a celebrity seagull?
The best advice when taking photos is take as many as you want; you never know what will show up. When I went on a Europe camping trip for three months in 1983, I took 70 rolls of film; one for each day of the trip. Ended up selling a few rolls to my Autotours EX57 buddies, but I used most of them. When in doubt, take the photo.
Then be prepared for something to happen you couldn’t have arranged in a million years. Like this crazy person walking out onto the sea cliff across the bay from me at the same time a small boat was headed toward the harbor. Imagine!
If it had been earlier or later in the day, the lack of glaring sun would’ve made the colors deeper. But short of hiring people to stand out on rocks, we have to take what pops up in front of us. Literally.
So always be prepared with extra memory cards and backup batteries. There may be a cranky seagull in your future.
Photo on!
You must be logged in to post a comment.