Meet Joe

Last Sunday, when I drove past our town's public football field I noticed that our little fountain by the field was given its purpose of existence. Usually, it doesn't have jets of water spouting out to make it more than just a concrete structure, or so I notice. So that afternoon, wanting to try out my new camera and sharpen my photography skill, I returned to the place for a practice session on the fountain.

When I reached there, I noticed a couple was feeding a flock of pigeons beside the fountain, and my photographic target changed.

I was excited about the sudden and occasional lift-offs of the pigeons, which had its aural and visual impacts in real life. But through my camera? Clutters.

But that's probably down to my photographic skill.

As I was going through the shots I'd taken on my camera's LCD screen, suddenly I heard a voice, "Hey, stupid! You don't have a focus!"

As I looked around, peoples were playing football, throwing frisbees, walking and jogging so far away from me that the voice was too near to not arouse my suspicion.

"Hey, over here!"

This time, I managed to trace the voice, to a pigeon, balancing itself on a wire above me.

A talking pigeon?

Who cares. What really interested me more wasn't why it could talk, but what it was saying.

"I had a focus. The camera said so," I argued.

"No, dummy. Focus as in a subject for your picture!" the pigeon explained.

I planted a light slap on my forehead, "Of course!", and pointed my camera towards the pigeons and started clicking again.

"Gee, that's better," I sighed and turned to look for the talking pigeon to express my gratitude. But he wasn't on the wire anymore. As I was trying to locate him amongst the flock on the ground, he made himself seen and his words heard, "They could be better, you know."

"Yeah? How?", this time I was all ears.

"You're holding a Nikon D5100 with a multi-angle LCD screen, aren't you?", the pigeon inquired.

"Boy, you're good!", I couldn't hide my amazement.

"Well, perspective, my boy! Perspective!" the pigeon remarked.

Another slap on my forehead, and another round of shootings.

Great!

Well, at least I'm satisfied.

After another fifteen minutes of shooting, I was ready to go. As I was walking toward my car, the pigeon's voice rang again, "You know, what you called clutters just now weren't all that bad. Go through them and see what you can do with some image editing functions."

I nodded in appreciation. "Hey, a picture before I go?" I asked.

And Joe complied. Yeah, his name is Joe.

Joe was right. After going through the 'clutters', with my limited knowledge on image editing I managed to come out with these.

Not great. But they didn't turn out too bad, did they?

Well, at least I'm satisfied.

Oh, by the way ...

Meet Joe -

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