Earlier this week I posted a cluttered skyline of Myrtle Beach. Today, a different kind of skyline and a different kind of clutter, if you like.
I’ve been trying to get good shots of birds in flight for a while now. A newer camera and a longer, faster lens have both helped, even when shooting at a great distance. From the deck of a boat. In a fair breeze.
Fly! Fly!
Bank! Bank!
Land! Land!
At 187 feet or about 20 stories, the SkyWheel may not quite dominate the skyline but it does stand out.
It stands out at a distance . . .
It stands out down the street . . .
It stands out in unanticipated reflections . . .
It stands out up close in the daylight . . .
It stands out up close in the dark . . .
It stands out in motion . . .
And it stands out from different points of view.
The Myrtle Beach SkyWheel stands out.
While painting is an additive art – adding brushstrokes and detail to the canvas – photography, they say, is a subtractive art that succeeds best when it eliminates potential distractions — aka clutter — from the frame.
I don’t know anything about painting, but this description of photography resonates for me. Usually, I find simpler to be better, and so I work at framing or cropping my photo to remove the clutter from the subject.
But sometimes the clutter is the subject. Or so it seems to me.
On a blustery February day I am visiting the Tom Yawkey Wildlife Center nearish to Georgetown SC for a guided trip around this property, willed to the State for perpetual conservation purposes by, you guessed it, Tom Yawkey.
Although the purpose of the trip is birding, we also stop at some historical sites, including a rice mill tower built before 1820. It survived reportedly determined bombardment by Union ships during the Civil War because, I guess, they never actually hit it.
One thing about wintering near the ocean: it affords me many opportunities to see many kinds of boats and to note their differences and similarities.
Flat-bottomed boat used as 49-passenger ferry and for nature tours in Cape Romain NWR estuary
Shrimping boat at McClellanville commercial dock
Speedboat at marina in St. Augustine FL
The conclusion seems clear: Boats have ropes.
Who knew that pelicans had noses? Not I. But what else would you call this bit at the end of their long-ish bill?
Unless it’s a fingernail . . .
Owner of the nose in a pensive pose.
Don’t look at it too closely: Some things are best seen in a passing glance. I may have first seen this face when the lettering was upside down, as here, over-riding the reading reflex.
The Mona Lisa smile is sort of classic, don’t you think?
Posted: 2025 Jun 13
Thanks to John Whitman for this slightly dismayed face from downtown Ottawa.
This space is available for other submissions.
