Feather

Last week, when I was in Kelowna, I explored a wonderful wetland area called "Brandt's Creek Watershed." A portion of this is right in the downtown area close to the beaches on Lake Okanagan and there are a number of walkways crossing the creek. As you walk along, numerous bird species can be seen and heard but as usual, ducks are most abundant. I was looking at the water, when I noticed an area with several feathers floating on the surface, and felt that an image was there, so I set up my camera with a long focus lens and tried isolating several compositions. To my dismay, the ducks, seeing me, decided that I would feed them, so some quickly swum over and promptly disturbed my careful compositions! After failing a couple of times, I was about to move on, when the ducks left and I was able to concentrate on this lone feather. I liked the way the twig just below the surface intersected the feather as well as the reflection of the feather in the water. The tiny pieces of detritus all added to the image as well as the swirl of light in the water surrounding the feather. It was as if the feather was in the bull's eye of a target, and there was the sense of counter clockwise motion of the feather. After seeing this print, I was very happy that I had not given up at attempting to capture this image.

[photo for week of 5 July 2010]

© David Butts, 2010