Since the birds won the big superbowl game tonight, I thought it fitting to post one of favorite bird shots.  This was the first assignment for the only photography class I took in college.  It was a simple, go to a park and shoot what you see.  Well, I saw a boy and his mother throwing popcorn for all the pigeons and then running away from them to do it again from another spot.

There were hundreds of birds flying around and I finally got into a good position for capturing them with my camera when the boy tossed up the popcorn for the last time.  I focused on one pigeon as he flew near and snapped off three quick shots. Unlike today, I had no idea whether I captured anything worth keeping, but when I processed the film, I was very pleased with this image.

I was learning to use the darkroom at the same time and I remember focusing a lot of my first few days on this image.  I tried many different techniques, but in the end, a straight forward, normal exosure was all that was needed.