Gulls Two
The trick to gull photography is going where there are hundreds of gulls flying around, pointing your camera in that general direction, and shooting photos until your index finger goes limp.
I don't want to be immodest here, but you should know the truth. About fifteen minutes into the photo shoot, I made an astonishing – perhaps revolutionary – breakthrough in the science of gull photography. More birds means more photos, I realized. I needed to steal the gulls away from the other, less Type-A tourists. The solution was popcorn, which I immediately purchased and started throwing. It worked – the gulls abandoned the others and swarmed me. Ah, sweet success.
But just like Da Vinci and Edison before me, I soon understood that such light-speed progress brings problems of its own. It's very difficult to throw popcorn and snap pictures at the same time, especially when the popcorn is sold in a conical container that narrows to a point at the bottom, and thus will not sit quietly on the railing.
Salvation came in the form of a Lebanese couple, both doctors, who saw me bumbling between my camera and the popcorn and took pity. Soon the doctors were enthusiastically lofting popcorn and I was snapping away. We continued that way for what might have been a half-hour.
An epochal length of time stretches between the twitch of your finger and the click of the shutter. A bird could fly the length of a school bus in that lazy moment. So there's no aiming for gulls. You shoot at the air, and the gulls swoop down and pose, or they don't. In about 80% of shots, they don't. These are the other 20%.
Enlarge this one. The gull on the far right is looking at me. He's on to me!
There's the popcorn.
I don't want to be immodest here, but you should know the truth. About fifteen minutes into the photo shoot, I made an astonishing – perhaps revolutionary – breakthrough in the science of gull photography. More birds means more photos, I realized. I needed to steal the gulls away from the other, less Type-A tourists. The solution was popcorn, which I immediately purchased and started throwing. It worked – the gulls abandoned the others and swarmed me. Ah, sweet success.
But just like Da Vinci and Edison before me, I soon understood that such light-speed progress brings problems of its own. It's very difficult to throw popcorn and snap pictures at the same time, especially when the popcorn is sold in a conical container that narrows to a point at the bottom, and thus will not sit quietly on the railing.
Salvation came in the form of a Lebanese couple, both doctors, who saw me bumbling between my camera and the popcorn and took pity. Soon the doctors were enthusiastically lofting popcorn and I was snapping away. We continued that way for what might have been a half-hour.
An epochal length of time stretches between the twitch of your finger and the click of the shutter. A bird could fly the length of a school bus in that lazy moment. So there's no aiming for gulls. You shoot at the air, and the gulls swoop down and pose, or they don't. In about 80% of shots, they don't. These are the other 20%.
Enlarge this one. The gull on the far right is looking at me. He's on to me!
There's the popcorn.
posted by Eric at 6:05 AM
1 Comments:
wonderful shots of those beautiful birds against the architecture of Dubai. maybe there's a future for you at National Geographic or the Audubon Society. The Gulls of Dubai instead of the Bridges of Madison County. Dad
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