Pigeons in flight

I took this photo in the arts district on September 1st. I was actually in the middle of a senior portrait shoot at the time, but I can never resist taking photos of birds in flight so I pointed my camera skyward and snapped one shot.

When I was in college and just learning photography, one of my professors took care to introduce his students to the works of the brilliant photographers that shaped the art form. We learned about Paul Strand, Stieglitz, Man Ray, Cartier-Bresson... so many great artists. When you're 19 you think you know everything, so it's a really amazing feeling to be struck dumb by a work of art that you've never seen before. My photography class took a road trip to Denver to see a show by the late Andre Kertesz at the Denver Art Museum, and though I had heard of Kertesz I couldn't say I knew anything about him or had seen any of his work. That day I saw an image he had taken of a pigeon in flight, and I was dumbfounded by its astonishing beauty and timing and precision. Its sheer perfection. After that I was utterly in awe of Kertesz and his talent. His ability to take the most mundane object -- a fork, a chair, a pair of eyeglasses, a pigeon -- and just see and understand its form and its beauty, and to capture that so perfectly... it still leaves me speechless. To this day, so many years later, Kertesz's images still move me like no other photographer's.

This explains my fascination with photographing birds in flight. It's my own little homage to my biggest inspiration.