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Snowy Egret

Tony Britton

Active member
Side-lighting helped me achieve the style and mood I desired in this photograph of a Snowy Egret.

Tony

snowyegretbritton2017sony-L.jpg
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Side-lighting helped me achieve the style and mood I desired in this photograph of a Snowy Egret.

Tony

snowyegretbritton2017sony-L.jpg



Superb portrait, Tony!

Usually, white egrets and herons are shown with smoke vegetation and perhaps some shallow water prey for the picking. While these are all truthfull, this picture eschews the environment and as in acportait of a person, focuses on the subject for its essence. You have achieved that with aplomb!

I admire the clean composition and the perfect white feathers against this deep dark background. It’s so very effective and I am impressed. But then you do have an advantage as this singularly long tall elegant bird is so much more “portraitable” than a thrush, Hummer, hawk or dove! This heron has elegance like Audrey Hepburn in a white dress or a homoerotic white marble sculpture of an celebrated athlete, (commandeered by a Pope from the Roman Colliseum), renamed, in Holiness, “Truth” in the haughty halls of the Vatican Art Museum in Rome! This has that kind of superior and celebrated awesome “standing” and attitude, that Roman Senators in their white robes, aspired to reach! Tell me, what bird shows more class, wisdom, craft, self-worth and quiet aristocracy?

What you have presented is admirable and perfect for a wall in a fine home!

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
.....but I would like the rest of the left foot and a bigger piece of green leaf somewhere, but these are nitpicking niggles!

Asher
 

Tony Britton

Active member
Superb portrait, Tony!

Usually, white egrets and herons are shown with smoke vegetation and perhaps some shallow water prey for the picking. While these are all truthfull, this picture eschews the environment and as in acportait of a person, focuses on the subject for its essence. You have achieved that with aplomb!

I admire the clean composition and the perfect white feathers against this deep dark background. It’s so very effective and I am impressed. But then you do have an advantage as this singularly long tall elegant bird is so much more “portraitable” than a thrush, Hummer, hawk or dove! This heron has elegance like Audrey Hepburn in a white dress or a homoerotic white marble sculpture of an celebrated athlete, (commandeered by a Pope from the Roman Colliseum), renamed, in Holiness, “Truth” in the haughty halls of the Vatican Art Museum in Rome! This has that kind of superior and celebrated awesome “standing” and attitude, that Roman Senators in their white robes, aspired to reach! Tell me, what bird shows more class, wisdom, craft, self-worth and quiet aristocracy?

What you have presented is admirable and perfect for a wall in a fine home!

Asher
WOW! What a delightful and thoughtful response to this image. I greatly appreciate your comments!

Tony
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
WOW! What a delightful and thoughtful response to this image. I greatly appreciate your comments!

Tony

Tony,

One simply starts off from the immediate and certain impression that this egret is different from almost every picture of an egret I have seen.

In fact this “noticing of a major difference” is taught to children in a Jewish home from before the time they can read.

On Passover, (the time of Easter holidays), the youngest child recites the same “Four Questions” in each generation, (as has been the custom for several thousand years).

The first is “Why is this night different from all other nights?” It starts in Hebrew with “Mah nishtana?”, meaning, “In what way is different?”

This set of naive questions then initiated and allows the father of the household to explain that history period when our ancient ancestors were slaves in Egypt and the lessons in human behavior we need to learn from that.

When I was in Medical School, there was a bespoke book on Internal Medicine by John Pappenheimer as a guide to acquiring the Sherlock Holmes like skills in evaluating patient’s symptoms and signs. He would advise all students to find a Jewish friend and learn the “Four Questions” and the significance of “Mah nishtana?”

He wanted folk to know, “In what way is this knee pain different from all other knee pains?” This approach was revolutionary, since other teachers gave long lists of causes of knee pain. Pappenheimer had none of that. He only was concerned with the features that distinguishedvtge particular knee pain and allowed immediate diagnosis. The same with bacteria. There were no lists of cocci. But the gonnoccus, (causing gonnorhea, (pissing raisor blades and dripping pus),was simply caused by the gram negative diplococcus that ferments glucose but neither maltose nor sucrose. He had no interest in any medical student spurting a list of 19 horrible venereal diseases, as the correct description aced the correct diagnosis!

So, When I see this Snow White elegan bird of yours, I know it’s distinguished and from there I try to find descriptors that exclude all other white birds and just define your picture, your art and the experiences it evokes in me.

So I said to myself, in what way is this picture of a wild bird different from all other birds I have ever seen?

That exercise allows one to focus on the uniqueness of your photograph compared to my experience in life up to this point. If at the end, it would turn out to be just another nice well seen picture, I would write nothing much at all as I would have not been moved!

Asher
 

Tony Britton

Active member
Asher,

I’m stunned and humbled by your thoughtful and inspirational comments. I especially appreciate the history behind the “Four Questions.” I especially find it amazing that you mentioned medicine. My interest in medicine, particularly, its history, is among my very favorite subjects. I have an especially keen interest in the history of Western Medicine. The accomplishments and contributions from the titans of medicine such as Hippocrates, Galen, Vesalius and Harvey hold a very special place in my heart.

Perhaps seventy percent of my home library is dedicated to such study. My very special interest and love is in the etymology of medical and anatomical terminology. The derivations of the terminology found within these fields is not only fascinating and educational, the terminology offers a glimpse into the thoughts and culture of the day. An endlessly fascinating time capsule. As I tell my friends, history never gets old! Especially medical and anatomical history.

Kind regards,

Tony
 

Doug Kerr

Well-known member
When I was in Medical School, there was a bespoke book on Internal Medicine by John Pappenheimer as a guide to acquiring the Sherlock Holmes like skills in evaluating patient’s symptoms and signs. He would advise all students to find a Jewish friend and learn the “Four Questions” and the significance of “Mah nishtana?”

He wanted folk to know, “In what way is this knee pain different from all other knee pains?” This approach was revolutionary, since other teachers gave long lists of causes of knee pain. Pappenheimer had none of that. He only was concerned with the features that distinguished the particular knee pain and allowed immediate diagnosis. The same with bacteria. There were no lists of cocci. But the gonnoccus, (causing gonnorhea, (pissing raisor blades and dripping pus),was simply caused by the gram negative diplococcus that ferments glucose but neither maltose nor sucrose. He had no interest in any medical student spurting a list of 19 horrible venereal diseases, as the correct description aced the correct diagnosis!

What a wondrous story, Rebbe Asher!

Best regards,

Doug
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
What a wondrous story, Rebbe Asher!

Best regards,

Doug

Doug,

Others would learn of 20 causes of a swollen knee. But that ignores feature checking. Adding + swollen painful large toe, means “gout”. So there are not so causes of anything once one adds the necessary descriptors.

A “pulsating hemicrania” is not a mere “headache”, rather it’s migraine!



snowyegretbritton2017sony-L.jpg


A tall elegant, authoratative pure-white, long-necked carnivorous bird is surely a Snow White egret!

Asher
 

Chris Calohan

Well-known member
Socratic questioning is the best teaching tool there ever was. I used it with both my students and as a tool for mentoring teachers attempting to complete their National Board exams. The answers are almost always inside of us if someone just makes the right associative query as given in the Four Questions at Passover.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Socratic questioning is the best teaching tool there ever was. I used it with both my students and as a tool for mentoring teachers attempting to complete their National Board exams. The answers are almost always inside of us if someone just makes the right associative query as given in the Four Questions at Passover.

Exactly!

Asher
 
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