Baby bird white feather kaleidoscope imagery
I often scan my apartment balcony floor tiles for little bird feathers. Feral pigeons have made their homes amongst the AC units on the apartment towers. Baby bird feathers seem to be appearing with regular frequency at the moment. Evidence of the pigeons breeding. This collection of photos uses a tiny white baby bird feather to create kaleidoscope imagery.
Producing the kaleidoscope photos
Producing this type of work takes patience. Due to the feathers tiny size and the soft fluffy texture it is sometimes difficult to set them up in the frame as precisely as I’d like. Even controlling the studios air flow needs managing. No overhead fans or air conditioning is possible when I working with this delicate subject matter. They’d simply fly away.
I use a macro lens to explore and capture all the intricate details. I’m conscious of selecting the focus area, which in this work is very narrow. The mix of in-focus sharp detail and out of focus soft and blurry areas makes for an interesting composition.
I download and select the imagery, delete the failures etc. A quick process of converting the photos to black and white is the next step in my process. Then a slow trawl through the imagery that’s made it through to this stage. More deletes. From the remaining photos I pick ones that I feel have some promise. I simply screen-cap them from Adobe Lightroom and mix and match them on my desktop. If a concept is pleasing I’ll keep exploring the pattern. This usually involves mirroring, and repeating the images until I’m satisfied I’ve achieved what I was after.
Feathers are a constant theme in my practice. Here is a journal post where I was experimenting with the pareidolia effect. And this one features more kaleidoscope imagery.
Artist: Tahnia Roberts ©2021
Category: Photography
Style: Abstract
Subject matter: Baby pigeon feathers
Medium: Digital, photo, black and white
Artist country: Malaysia
