Something to Crow About

As I said, most of my photos have a story. While on a vacation in October 2007 which took us down the Blue Ridge Parkway, we decided to take a ride on the Great Smoky Mountain Railway from Bryson City to Dillsboro, NC. On the return leg of the ride, we rode in the open air car - much better than the coach car for photographs. I was on one side of the car and Patti was on the other side. It felt like most of my photos were going to end up in the discard bin because the ride was rather rocky and I could not seem to steady the Nikon with any reliability. I heard Patti say, "Come over to this side, there are a bunch of chickens out here." I staggered to the other side of the open air car and spied the aforementioned chickens. There on top of the shed was a rooster. I brought up the camera and basically just fired the shutter. As the train trip drew to an end I had pretty much forgotten about that specific shot.

That night I was going through the routine of downloading all of our photos (hundreds and hundreds of them each night). I came across the rooster photo. Not only was it in focus with decent composition, it caught him in the middle of a crow! This was one of my best captures from the 9 day trip!