seagull

When I'm fuckin' angry as I was this morning I usually hate shooting. Shooting is something exciting, something you can't afford to do in a hurry, or nervously, or without being in the proper mood. Unfortunately today I *had* to shoot pictures of a house to collect documentation about a project downtown, and this unexpectedly relieved my mood even if it was lunch time, it was damn hot under the sun and I just quarreled with a couple of technicians supposed to accept some documents which they didn't. I started to shoot lazily and without much interest, then the infamous seagulls which populate my hometown started grazing the ledges of our beautiful square upon the sea. I like shooting seagulls but I don't like pictures of seagulls and I was mid-way between complaining about the lack of interest and the firm intent of shooting a decent picture of one of those assassin birds. I had - to get things worse - a D50 with me, a bulky D-SLR I dislike, but in the bag there was an old Nikon zoom, a 70-210 which turns out to be the optical equivalent of a 105-315 if mounted on a digital body. Nice. I wanted a closeup of one of those fucking birds and I didn't want to shoot it when the bird was resting, it had to be the equivalent of a gunshot. Sometimes you just need somethin' to relieve the pain and let the rage blow. I started focusing at 105, following the seagulls and then extending the zoom up to 315; these old zoom lenses have to be pushed and pulled to zoom in and out while focusing and following the subject. I succeeded in shooting the picture I wanted in fifteen minutes: a seagull showing fiercely its wings and entering the gunshot line just a moment before shooting. Oh, really, I'm not looking forward to fire bullets at seagulls, don't get alarmed; I love these aggressive noisy stinky condor-like birds, they're one of my hometown's symbols. They just *rule* here. If I ever have to be born again, I hope to be a majestic seagull from Piombino. Oh, yes, and shit all over the city, just for fun...

Shot with a Nikon D50 and a fuckin' heavy 70-210 (105-315) zoom