KICKED OUT OF THE NEST
By MICHAEL PERKINS
“YOU MUST SUFFER TO BE BEAUTIFUL“, runs the old adage, which I always took to mean that anything worthwhile comes with some degree of sacrifice. Without musing too much about what happens to all of us who suffer and still are ugly, let’s at least admit that, like it or not, beauty, or art, has to be coaxed and groomed into existence, which I suppose is why the noun artist is so frequently preceded by the modifier tortured. The take-home of this, at least for me as a photographer, is that no real growth or improvement comes unless you risk frustration and/or failure. There’s a reason why many mommy birds teach their kids to fly by simply kicking them out of the nest. Comfort is the enemy of creative evolution.
That’s why this entry seems to cry out for an ornithological illustration, as I myself have found the pursuit of bird images to be the perfect vehicle for kicking myself out of my own creative nest. Other than landscape work, I find that shooting birds requires greater amounts of patience and humility than anything else I’ve ever undertaken in photography. Even with sixty-plus years of experience under my belt, making bird pictures puts me immediately back at Square One, feeling like an ignorant child who doesn’t even grasp which way to point the bloody camera. In terms of applying what I’ve learned over a lifetime in pursuit of greater success with my feathered friends, I keep thinking of the old Firesign Theatre comedy album, Everything You Know Is Wrong, and I fantasize that, had I the temperament of a Buddhist monk, I might, somehow, have gotten better than I am at the whole game.
The image seen here is typical of thousands of bird images that I’ve attempted that fall into some murky grey zone between Almost Good and Bloody Embarrassing. You’ve also taken pictures like this, with one or two elements showing promise and others that seem to say Sorry, I’m New At This. “Suffering to be beautiful”, in the case of my wildlife shots, means taking what’s an average “hit ratio” of decent-to-failed pictures and learning to be satisfied with less. A lot less. Turns out that living creatures who must spend all day, every day, just trying to stay fed and alive are remarkably unconcerned with whether or not I get the shot. Go figure. That means that my photographs are made at their whim, not mine.
I have to think of myself, therefore, as a witness to a great picture rather than as its author. The number of things under my control in a standard shooting situation shrinks to near invisibility for bird work, and so, whenever I get lazy or stale, I really ought to “sentence” myself to a bird shoot just to be forced to work at the highest level of intentionality and mental focus. Returning to our opening meditation on birds leaving the nest, it’s worth remembering that some youngsters who fledge from precarious perches, like a spiny Saguaro cactus for example, have one try at flinging themselves clear of the plant to avoid being impaled on it. Now that’s someone who understands something about leaving your comfort zone.
thenormaleye 