Location Taken: Arcadia, Michigan
Time Taken: December 2007
I love it when bird pose for me. They do it fairly often, especially when there’s a bird-feeder around.
It’s because of their tendency to freeze when they notice movement, such as me pulling out my camera. It’s a solid defense mechanism. It helps keep them from being noticed right when something is surveying the trees for birdy dinner.
This freezing doesn’t last long, though. I usually only have time for a shot or two.
And sometimes, well, I didn’t quite get the focus right.
I use manual focus, you see. I actually adjust it to about the right spot using the little analog stick that comes on my camera. It’s one of the features I looked for when I was camera shopping, since it allows much better control over the focus for the close-up shots I love doing.
It does take longer than just letting the auto-focus work, though. And if I guess the distance just enough wrong, well, this sort of shot happens. And on the small display screen of my camera, it looks just fine. This leads me to some brilliant compositions, with perfect color, and the pine needles getting the focus. Which lead to me creating this “almost” category, since they’re still good enough that I didn’t want to give up on them.
It really is still such a nice shot…
