Death of a Sparrow

    

Sparrow (© Evan Lipton)

    It was a peaceful, beautiful day in Austin. The temperature was in the low 80’s, not hot at all by Austin standards. I had just moved back to Austin the week before and had decided to visit a vintage furniture store on North Loop called Room Service that I used to frequent my first time living here a few years before. I was walking up Duval street in the Hyde Park neighborhood not really thinking about anything. Two sparrows were flying in unison with each other. Right after they flew in front of me and attempted to fly across the street, one of the birds was hit by a car coming down Duval Street.
    The bird that got hit seemed only inches behind and below the other bird. The driver’s side front end, right by the headlight is where the bird met its end.  There was a thud and the bird was thrust approximately 15 feet ahead. I watched it roll over very quickly on the side of the road. The last roll seemed rather dramatic as the bird’s wing stretched out above, almost as an appeal for mercy before it finally came to a stop, all its breath gone.
    I felt sorrow as I looked upon the dead sparrow. I’ve never seen a bird get hit by a car before but as I thought about it, I figured it happens all the time. I also felt sorrow for the other bird who continued on. Had this been a mate, parent, child or sibling. I’m sure it’s part of a sparrow's life, from the time they hatch, to be taught and cautioned about all the different prey that awaits them: cats, owls, electrical lines and cars. I thought about how the other sparrow must have felt deep sadness. I know I’m anthropomorphizing the sparrow but I’m sure it felt something towards sadness and that sadness was felt by the other birds of their flock when that sparrow returned alone.
    As I continued to walk up Duval, I couldn’t help but think of the randomness of it all. It was just a matter of seconds. Had the birds flown straight instead of in a semi circle before they flew across the street, the bird would have cleared the car. Or had the driver started their car a few seconds later, the birds would have been across the street by the time the car arrived at the site of impact. 

If only. 

I'm a Traveller

The English Channel at St Leonards-on-Sea

    In 2005, in Paris, while sitting at a cafe, I wrote to my friend on the back of a postcard that I had to move here. I was completely enamored with the city. I’m sure that is a sentiment a lot of people have. Not just with Paris but any place you might be on vacation. Everything is new to you. And the grass is always greener. I did not move to Paris then. But now, almost 20 years later, I’m stepping out for a completely new experience which, initially, will take me to Europe and Paris.

Creating in Photoshop (European Version)

  As the title suggests, the photos that are the subject of this post are ones I took on a recent European trip earlier this year. This is my 3rd instatement of the "Creating in Photoshop" series. You can read the previous ones from 2015 and 2021. As in those previous posts, the sentiment is the same; enjoying being in the moment as I use different techniques to create something new and eye catching. I took a couple thousand photos on my trip not necessarily with the idea of experimenting with them in photoshop.  A month after I got back and, once again, there was a desire to create something. 

The Arch de Triomphe

   

The Enchantment of The Nutcracker

“La Bataille” scene in The Nutcracker- photo by Anne Marie Bloodgood

    This is my third year in a row working as a stagehand/electric through IATSE Local 205 for Ballet Austin's The Nutcracker by Tchaikovsky. Before that first year, I had never seen the Nutcracker before. Over the years I became familiar with the basic plot and I had certainly heard 5 or 6 songs throughout my childhood Christmases, most notably “The March”. In the 3 years working on this ballet, I have come to appreciate Tchaikovsky's music immensely but what is most thrilling to me about working on this show is the excitement backstage, especially during Act 1, after the party scene where we’re introduced to Drosselmeyer and the Nutcracker. It’s quite inspiring actually to see everyone involved coming together and making theater magic.

Linen Postcards

The finished Parthenon photo

                                                        
                                         Check out more of my Linen Postcard work at POC Photo Company

   

     Recently I was editing some photos I had taken on my trip to Nashville. I came across a photo I took of the Parthenon. For those that don’t know, Nashville built a life size replica of the temple that sits in Athens, Greece in 1897 as part of the Tennessee Centennial and International Exposition. I thought the photo looked rather drab; the grass in the foreground was brown and the sky was overcast. I did like the framing however of the mostly grass and sky with this sliver of a building in the middle. Usually when editing photos of my trips, I don’t do anything more than color correct, adjusting the contrast here and bringing out more detail in the shadows there, those sorts of things. Unless I'm looking for some sort of mood whereupon I’ll add a filter or preset but that’s a whole different situation. With the Parthenon photo I adjusted a lot of the parameters to get that grass green and the sky blue. After experimenting for a bit however it looked less like a photo and more like an illustration. What it reminded me of was the linen postcards that were very popular between the 1930’s and 1950’s.