Three-finger exercise

@Amy: Tooshey! From Seurat to Monet to ... Renoir next? I've got a few things to say about this pic. First, you may notice the EXIF is different - a new camera for me with a 10mb zoom - and this photo was one of the first I took with it - at a fair distance. Not a great success, and hoping to compensate, I enlarged it, cropped severely around the head and claw, then softened the edges in white - and THEN, just when I thought I coudn't go any more kitchy - I put my logo up the side in that font - and bingo! the whole thing looks like a Japanese or Korean record cover from the 1950s! The other reason you may not have liked it on first impact is that it is a very intimate view of a BIRD - yes, we fear birds, we all do - I watched Hitchcock's The Birds again last week - how well he plays on our fear of birds when they get as close as this. And lastly, there's something spooky about old man cockatoo - he's been around for thousands of millenia and he's seen it all. Glad you liked it Amy - I'm obsessed by it now!

@Behrooz: Thanks Behrooz - so much to learn - so little patience!

@Behrooz: Accidental rather than by design - the effects are interesting, though. Thanks Behrooz for the visits!