Donut Bokeh
Hi bloggy,
I know it's been said over and over for all of human history but it's very true so I'll say it again: the outdoors is so beautiful. I'm listening to some nice folky country music from a mixtape I don't remember how I acquired (but from how it's signed it's clearly made by someone from Olympia who is Jewish so I feel like I probably know them at least?) and watching the trees sway in my backyard and thinking about how the word "sway" is wholly inadequate to capture the mesmerizing dance of the branches: each moving separately combined with the whole trees swaying like a bedsheet rippling in the wind and it's all happening at different speeds and I'm ENTRANCED.
Yesterday I went and saw the Harris's Sparrow I've mentioned elsewhere in this blog! It's not supposed to be in Washington but it's been here since December, just hanging out with the Song Sparrows and now the White-Crowned Sparrows and Cowbirds as well. Here he is:
Such nice markings. Currently in molt, as you can see the loose feathers in the one where he's puffed up. I love him.
During my time in Kitsap I also saw a really beautiful Pigeon Guillemot and a Caspian Tern, both of which got me really excited:
One of the joys of having an older manual focus mirror lens is that the "bokeh," which is what the out of focus parts of the photo is called, is something called "donut bokeh" which is an unintended effect where it puts little rings everywhere. It looks really psychedelic in the right context and people will use old lenses to create intentional distorted effects. I barely understand how it works myself, but here's an example of it REALLY showing up in this chickadee photo I took while in Kitsap County:
Trippy, huh?
Here are some other photos I liked, featuring a House Sparrow, a European Starling, a Brown-headed Cowbird and a Canada Goose.
I didn't think I would get so into photography as part of my birding, but I really have. It's been nice. It's nice to do something that's not writing? That just is a simple document of a thing I like? I feel like I've been creating the most deep weird strange stuff for so long it's nice to just take a picture of a bird, you know?
~S