Beauty Lies Where The Light Is Right - Red Spurfowl

Mulshi, Maharashtra

Through the years, I’ve repeatedly heard my friends say “Oh ! I saw him / her at the airport and he / she looked so normal, must be the cameras they use;” about some person or the other from TV that they ran into. I bite my tongue when I hear that usually but I always want to retort with, “It’s not the camera that’s responsible for making the normal or ordinary look extraordinary, you know. It’s the light.” Cameras just reproduce what’s in front. The makeup helps too, but that’s supposed to be adjusted to the plan for lighting. Turn on any soap opera or low budget action show and the cringe worthy dreamy lighting and super bright backgrounds makes the whole scene seem so fake and unreal by today’s standards. Badly done, unnatural, artificial lighting was a thing back in the 80’s. You can feast your eyes on the wretched formula easily when you revisit most music videos from the era when Mtv started. It’s pretty much like bad colour editing these days on our stills and videos. Enough of the negative though. The good is that the right light on many a subject has taught me to appreciate the beauty in pretty much anything natural. It’s sad for me that my brain can’t find beauty in unnatural things yet. As subjects, man’s creations lack individual character which I like to witness. It’d be so much easier if I just had a thing for buildings and not beings. There are no ugly creatures on this wonderful planet for me because each individual subject’s uniqueness in behavior is a wonder in itself. If you find an ugly creature, chances are that you probably need to look again during another time of day perhaps. Well, you might differ with me on that and that’s fine, really but the point that I’m trying to make here is that the right light can make even the most ordinary subject look fantastic and that’s just the way it is cause fantastic doesn’t really need to be pretty. Not for me anyway.

I’m harping on about light here cause my subject in question is the colourful Red Spurfowl who I met recently over various sightings at the Tamhini Nature’s Nest bird hide in Mulshi. I was taking these pics seated at the same spot as they’d come and go to the water during different times, over two consecutive days, one of which was overcast. One browse of this set of pictures just says it all about the effect of light on how a subject looks. My basic point is just highlighted more in this species case cause these subjects are colourful and hence the differences are easier to spot.

I just love how the first row of photos ( Pics : 1 – 6 ) turned out. Makes my chicken like friend look so imposing and confident no? Sure, she’s elevated on the rocks but she’s up on that same spot in the third row as well ( Pics : 13 – 18 ) along with the male who sports less of the black barring. See the difference? That’s my first point. The second is the elevation. I didn’t learn to appreciate short creatures till I started taking photos and saw my short guys at a height. We tend to appreciate things at eye level or higher more cause having them at those angles brings out the balance of the subject better given that most creatures are symmetrical and that’s the reason why you’ll see us camera guys laying down to get pictures. The photo of your beloved car or bike will always look better if you sit or lay down on the ground while taking the photo. You’re just getting the whole thing straight and as is like that. These short, pheasants are beautiful really with the black barring on the females being more prominent than the males. It's not common for female birds to sport more intricate colour and patterns and that's one of the things that really makes this species special I think. You can clearly see how the right light just makes them look so much more glamorous. I’d just ignore them if I always viewed them from my height where I’d be viewing them from up top which doesn’t give me the full picture at all.

The Red Spurfowl is related to the Jungle Fowl as they are both Pheasants. Their common ancestors went in different evolutionary paths like 15 million years ago. The domestic Chicken evolved from the Jungle Fowl sometime like 8 thousand years ago when we started to keep those guys around to provide entertainment for us by fighting each other. One thing led to another and the gladiator turned into our favorite meal in time turning it into the most populous bird on this planet. The purpose of the Chicken now permanently altered, I’m kinda glad that it’s the one species that has that relationship with us. We have to eat and the Chicken is well, evolved for that. Not the Spurfowl.

Running into these guys the way I did got me some photos that I think show off their beauty which is otherwise probably ignored and thrown in the bin of ordinary by most usually. Those patterns and colours are extraordinary and I’m sure that all of us would know this bird’s name had she just been a little taller. Well, the most beautiful thing about the camera is that it teaches you to see and I’ve started to mind the seasons, geography, perspective of sight and light now thanks to it. The right light needed to illuminate a small subject's intricacies always cannot be direct though because small shadows tend to bring out the camera's limitations and I’ll get into that in my next post. I met an old friend who just needed his picture taken properly. But that . . . is for next time.