Thursday, September 20, 2012

Silos, birds and that dang wire

There are times in life when a missed opportunity or special moment gone wrong just can't be corrected or recaptured.  Sure this could be one of those emotional, sappy or philosophical posts that has everyone all misty eyed but that is not going to be the case.  What you have instead is a mini rant on my problems with capturing a bunch of starlings on the wire of a silo.  

Several years ago one of my friends moved to an old farmhouse in the country.  I visited her often and many of my barn shots have been taken on the drive to her home.  I always have my camera in my lap when I am the passenger.  One day two years ago I noticed the birds liked to congregate on the wire above her neighbor's silo and took several shots.  This was the best of the lot and as you can see I zoomed in too close and cut of the top of the shot.     


I have been trying to recapture that shot ever since. I have taken dozens,  of shots that end up like the one above. Seems that every time our car gets anywhere near the farm in question, and I raise the viewfinder to my eye, the birds take off and I end up with lots of small black dots in the sky. 

A few weeks ago my friends moved back into town. I will probably never have the need to travel to that part of the country again so my hopes of recreating this shot will likely never happen.  


This experience however, has me checking out the tops of all the silos I come across.  I've noticed that most don't have this wire circle on them. I did come across this silo with a bent wire (and not a bird in sight) during a recent drive in the country while searching for an estate sale. 


Our old beater needed new car tags this month and in order to pass the emissions inspection, our state requires, we had to replace a sensor. In order to get the sensor to reset and allow the wagon to pass the inspection I needed to take it for a long drive.  I decided to use the trip as a photo opportunity and headed to a rural area I seldom visit.   

finally, as my little brother once said, "lucked up."  I captured the above shot of birds on the wire ring of a silo. Not near the number of birds I was hoping to find but a decent shot, just the same. 


Like I said at the start of this post  "There are times in life when a missed opportunity or special moment gone wrong just can't be corrected or recaptured."  And, I guess I will close the book on trying to recapture a silo wire full of birds.   














8 comments:

  1. Now that is a great shot and the old ceramic silo is wonderful. Never say never it could happen many times. B

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  2. Oh those uncooperative birds! What a neat shot though!

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  3. Glad you got a good shot finally...I have been missing opportunities lately because of traffic...on rural country roads where I think there shouldn't be any...and there is a car coming up fast behind me!

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  4. Cute post -- I have thought of doing a post on the "ones that got away"...they always stay in my memory. Maybe I still will some day.

    Starlings must like to have circle meetings or prayer circles or something.

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  5. Thats a great place for birds...I think they like it.

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  6. Success!!! :-) I laughed so hard over the flying birds circled in black. Too funny....because I've had similar experiences. Once I was using the 35mm camera, and shot an entire "roll" of film thinking I had gotten a really great cloud that looked like a bird's feather, and several shots of an incredible sky over a field in Va among other things. Only later did I discover there had been no film in the camera the whole time. Those moments were definitely lost. :-) And, like today....I'll have to post about this one. The space shuttle flew over Tucson. I wasn't expecting it, and I got some terrible pictures of a speck in the sky! :-) There certainly won't be any chance of repeating that one! But I still look for clouds that might look like bird's feathers every chance I get, just in case.

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  7. I have faith you will find a similar silo with an even better photo op!

    Thanks so much for sharing at Rural Thursdays this week. xo

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  8. I've done that too, missed the same shot repeatedly... hope you get yours!

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