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. It must be pigeon breeding season. 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. Because of the feathers’ size and soft fluffy texture, it’s often a challenge to set them up in the frame. Even controlling the studio’s airflow needs managing. No overhead fans or air conditioning is possible when I’m working with this delicate subject matter. They’d fly away.
I use a macro lens to explore and capture all the intricate details. I carefully select the area which I’d like to focus on. Which, for this type of 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. I then covert the photographs to black and white. Next, I slowly work through the imagery. More deletes. From the remaining photos, I pick ones that I feel have some promise. I 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.
