Urban scene: "City Birds"

(A typical scene early in the morning here in Emmarentia, Johannebsurg. Shot RAW, my first instinct was to render it in monochrome, but I actually think the colour suits it much better. I don't usually do street photography, but I though this one was interesting enough to share.)

My first reaction, Dawid, was to be disappointed about the lack of one clear subject, just one bird, the bench blown and no apparent aim for the picture, a better version I had seen previously.

Then I looked more and I wondered if the chaos and conflict for attention represents the hustle and bustle of the city in a novel way.

This we have the walkers with their unique dual walking poles, like displaced skiers, obviously involved in social exercise, and the traffic on the left busy as in any large cu=city and in the distance an intersection with crossing traffic closing the depth of the image.

The bird now appears like a sentinel between the machines on the left and the people on the right, in a way between mechanization and human effort akin to nature.

The bench is empty so that no one except the bird is resting. So we get a sense of vibrancy and motion in every direction of the city.

As to the colors, I'm a sucker for anything that approaches earth tones and sienna and this delivers. This color is always evocative of nature and we are comforted and feel secure by the safe separation between the machines and man at least on this path.

The picture is not sharp and the wall is in the foreground out of focus.

Even then, I find this picture transmits some unique nature of city life and it is special.

Is it art?

That will take more time.

Asher

Thank you, Asher, for your deep insight as always. I purposefully wanted only a single in-focus subject in this complex scene, and that is the bird (accomplished by shooting fairly wide open at 300mm).

If even the walking women were in focus (not to mention the foreground wall) then the object of my image would be defeated. I do wish it was slightly earlier in the morning, so as not to have blown the bench, but there's nothing I could do about that.

The title is also a play on how women used to be called "birds" as well.

At some stage I am going to have a look at this printed quite large, as the razor focus on the bird should immediately draw attention to it, thereafter allowing one to take in the scene. But I thank you for your input. You always manage to provide constructive technical criticism, as well as artistic insight. Few people manage to do both.

Hi Dawid,

For me, I think the composition works much better if you crop off the lhs - there is a faint vertical line (lamp post?) between the two traffic lights, that's more or less the place. I do not think the car and the large blurred out parapet area adds much to what I see the photo is about.

Best wishes,

Ray

I can see how cropping off the left hand side could work nicely. However, I'd have to consider a square crop (vs 3x2) as I also don't want to lose much vertically on the right hand side.

One the one hand, it will zoom in tighter on the subject matter only, but on the other hand, it will throw off the balance and the "bigger picture" of the image.

I'll give it a try sometime and post it.

Hi Dawid,

I'm a bit of a s*d for cropping - generally its all I see ;-) I try and analyse the path my eye takes in viewing the image, and see where it gets led into a dead end. There were some posts on opf a few months back, I'm too busy at the mo. to find the thread - but it linked to a chart of classic painting composition rules - nice to know the rules, so you can break them. Square is OK. Another option, is to blur the image edges - why have a hard line - your eyes don't work like that?

Best wishes,

Ray

If city birds interest you, you should shoot a lot more of them! Seek them out, deepen your understanding of their curious place in our modern masses of steel and metal. Are they adapting? Are they failing? Do they represent us, or something else? Do they laugh at us? I think your photo hints at many photos you may yet have a chance to make and explore.

The city of Johannesburg, however, is listed as having probably the most trees of any city anywhere in the world - it is the largest "man-made forest" (since this was grassland before civilisation arrived).

What this means, is that, except for the centre of the city with the skyscrapers etc, which I almost never enter (and which is highly dangerous around here), the birds' habitat is actually very suited to them, there is a truly huge abundance of birds here.

Most characteristic is the big Hadada Ibis, with its very loud (and unflattering) cries which are heard in almost every garden early in the morning. So this idea for a theme, though very tempting, is not quite ideal for Johannesburg, unless you really go looking for it in the dangerous areas, but we have 50+ murders per day on average. [1]

In any given year, more people die in South Africa because of violent (and often racially inspired against the white minority, especially farmers) crime than what dies in the "war" in Iraq. [2]

But back to the Hadada: I have a very small secluded back garden at my townhouse, and inevitably what happens is the following: I go outside, unaware of a few of these very large birds quietly walking around the plants catching earthworms (with the massive scimitar-like bills). The moment you startle them, they take off with a loud wing flapping (~2m wingspan...) and their call is so loud it scares the living daylights out of you. Every time. Their presence in pretty much any Johannesburg garden are one of those unique features of this bittersweet city.

The notion that such apparent menace lurks in every garden of a city you describe in such grim terms sounds like a metaphor made in movie heaven. Now to exploit it!