Mother natures discrimination

The feedback from the posting of the “One legged Gull,” image was quick in coming yesterday afternoon and evening. The initial image was taken in mid summer of 2006, and an additional image of the Gull was added to the web this morning.

The web link for the additional Gull image is located here:

http://www.spokanenightscenes.com/oneleg2.htm

The shot location is:

N48 14.285 W122 42.538

JDM

Mother natures discrimination. An evening with Whidbey Island Seagulls

In late 2006 though mid 2007, I had quite a number of photo opportunities on Whidbey Island. My son was a Deputy Prosecutor for Island County, and he had a house located at Penn Cove. As a result, there were always opportunities to take my cameras for a walk, and to see nature literally everywhere.

On one such occasion I noticed a number of Sea Gulls lined up along two sides of handrails on a northside Penn Cove Pier. There must have been 50 Gulls facing into the wind. One of the Gulls was separated by several feet from the mass of Gulls along one handrail, and I snapped a photo of as many of the Gulls as I could. Later when I begin to view the images on my laptop, I noticed that the Gull that was set apart from all the others only had one leg. I had witnessed that Gull fly up to the handrail and land on it, and nothing in way the Gull flew was any different than watching the other Gulls fly up to the Piers metal and wooden handrails.

After observing that the Gull had only one leg, I began to see this Gull a lot in the Penn Cove area. He was now easy to distinguish, as he was virtually always set apart form any other groups of Gulls that were present. I happened to mention this Seagull to my grandchildren, and they felt sorry for this Seagull because he was always “alone.”

I was not Biology major in my 7 years of College, nor do I consider myself as an expert in any matters at all related to animal/bird social practices. Yet, in this case, I did see that the one legged Gull was always apart from the other Gulls that had two legs.

I kinda got attached to this particular Gull, and in my Whidbey Island trips to visit with my son and his wife, I looked forward to looking for the one legged Gull, and normally it was easy to find.

It’s been about a year since I have been to Whidbey Island, since my son got recruited to Prosecute cases in Whatcom County (Bellingham), and his wife is now an RN at St Josephs Hospital in Bellingham. So, I wonder if this Gull is still alive and well on Whidbey. I had forgotten about him until this weekend when my grandkids finished up spending a week with my wife and I, and of course they asked about the one legged Gull.

So, if anyone happens to be in or around the north side of Penn Cove, on Whidbey Island, look for the one legged Gull and let me know if you find it. I’ll pass along that info to the grandkids.

Here is a photo taken one evening before sunset, and also the closest I ever saw that one legged Gull to any of the other Whidbey Island Gulls.

http://www.spokanenightscenes.com/oneleg.htm

JDM

Artluck 2008

Last Thursday night, I was able to participate in the May 2008 Artluck show, at Spokane Falls Community College. The event was held in the Lodge building on Fort George Wright Drive, and sponsored by the Institute of Extended Learning. Once again, the event featured a free dinner for all attendees, and once again, the food was really very good. I was wondering how the food would go over since we were doing Mexican food for the second straight event, but after consulting with my 4 grandchildren, they thought the food was very good, indeed.

The Artluck event was cosponsored by the Photography program at SFCC, as well as the Spokane Camera Club. Camera Club President Will Murray and I were the coordinators from the Spokane Camera Club, and from the reactions of the attendees and artists that I spoke with, they all felt that the event was very successful.

This event easily surpassed the attendance of the last two events, even if the attendance of the last two were counted together. I was pleased to see that and investing my time and website to help market/promote this event was well worth it. I’ll be happy to do it again for the next event, which we will try and do in November of this year.

Artluck is a great opportunity to meet artists and photographers who have common interests, as well as those who can spur you to try new techniques and methods. I think that we had 22 slide programs that we accepted for this event, including at least three high school students work, as well as some photography students from area colleges. These kids were all very talented people, and they can only get batter as the years add to their experience and skill levels.

Although there were a number of the artists that displayed great work, I found that photographer Kent Henderson and artist Erin Gibson were at the top of my list. I also liked the work of both Will and Barbara Murray (photography). In fairness and full disclosure, Erin Gibson is my daughter. How she can take out a pencil and piece of paper and draw like she does is an absolute amazement to me. Obviously she didn’t get that skill from my side of the family, but the more drawings she does, the better she gets. In looking at Kent Henderson’s photography, I also think that his demonstrable talent is evident now, but if he spends more time on his skills, look out. I spoke with Kent at some length, and we plan on working on some collective projects, since it is only fair to share the fun we both have in shooting around Spokane and elsewhere.

If I were to have any concerns at all about this months Artluck event, it is based on two issues. One, we are likely going to need a larger facility as we plan ahead. As more artists and their families/friends find out about this ongoing series of events, we are likely to get quite a crowd, even larger than we had at this month’s event. The other issue is the number of talented people in Spokane, that should be displaying their work, but who have opted not to for one reason or another. Yes, what I’m saying is that a lot of the talented people I spoke with at this month’s event were professional artists and photographers. Yet their skills were not displayed digitally in slide programs, as they never entered their work. I think that is a mistake on their part, but hopefully they will consider displaying the skills that they have, in November. Displaying artists work has never been easier, which has been a goal of ours. You submit your work digitally (CD), after the images have been resized 1024 max width or length, and you number the order of the slides. Then you choose your own music (or poetry, if that strikes you) and your slide program is assembled for you, prior to the event. Yes, you do not have to do it, it is done for you. How easy is that?

I think that those of us who are coordinating these events will at some point, have to evaluate each submission/entry, so that we keep the evenings slide displays at or under two hours. Many of our attending photographers are from out of Spokane, and it just isn’t fair to them to keep them until late into the night, so we can get all of the slide programs sent in, displayed. One way to get people out by 9PM or close to that time, would be to start earlier, so we can really give each slide program the space in the program that each artist needs. We already limit each program to less than 5 minutes, so we should be able to get almost all programs shown.

For this month’s event, we did have to sort through a large number of programs submitted by students, and these kids made it really hard to choose the top programs for display. Yet, that is a task that coordinators have, and if we need to, we are prepared to do the same evaluations in November for the next event.

At Spokane Night Scenes, I get feedback from photographers, all the time. When I look at the work done by these people, I am really surprised that they did not submit their work for others to admire. I really hope that you photographers who have emailed me from either the website or this blog, will get you work together for us to show, in Novembers event.

For those of you, who are learning about this Artluck event for the first time, keep in touch with me and I’ll update you on the next event as we get closer to getting it off the ground.

If possible, I want to see if I can identify a weblink for you to look at the work of the artists that I have mentioned in this article.

Erin Gibson:

http://www.spokanenightscenes.com/ebg/ebg.htm

Kent Henderson:

http://www.hendersonphoto.blogspot.com

I’ll see if the Murrays have their photos online, and if so I’ll provide that info.

JDM