This comes from a few years back, never been real good at animal nature photography, just never had the supreme patience of the Moose Petersons ( probably one of the greatest wildlife photogs of our time) of the world. Did really like this one though, not sure if it’s the photo or the back story that went along.

I was shooting a feature of Rueben Pinkerton’s Purple Martins.  Everybody in Decatur knows of Rueben’s affection for his Martins. Set up across the street with a 400, 2.8 and was waiting for the flock to come in, and noticed a piece of distracting material in the grass, slightly bored, went to retrieve and as I walked back toward the camera, (set on tripod, aimed at Martin houses), I looked up to see a dove setting on a fence opposite of camera. Slowly made my way back to camera, just as I swirled the camera around and got off one frame, the dove took flight, never looked at the back of the screen,  and I knew I had missed it.

 Finished the feature some three hours later, even went back that evening to do a portrait of Rueben and his birdhouses, still haven’t seen this shot. Downloaded later that night, almost fell out of my chair when this came up, can you can imagine something from nothing? Shooting wide open made the fence into a pleasant array of continuous lines that added to the winged emotion of the bird.  This still remains one of my favorites today even though it was a happy accident!