Twist of Fate

Where you are born can make a difference in your life. It turns out the same is true for chickens. Every year I have followed a 2nd grade class as they go through a life cycle unit that involves hatching chickens.  Not all the eggs make it to a healthy hatched chickens.  That’s true of chickens everywhere but sometimes if you are a chicken born in a 2nd grade classroom and you need a little help to start your life, you get a lucky break.  Meet this year’s lucky break:

ISO 800 50mm 0ev f/5.6 1/160

Not cute, like the other chicken photos I have shown you.  The reason for this is pretty simple, this chicken needed some help getting out of its shell, so it is still sticky and gunky.  Shortly after I took this photo though, he was cleaned up a bit, so the next day he looked like this:

ISO 1000 50mm 0ev f/5 1/200

He is still not the cutest, although his feathers have begun to grow in.  Because he is small, he has to be separated from the other chickens who peck at him.  Here he is three days later, moving day:

ISO 1000 50mm 0ev f/5 1/50

He is still small, but able now to hold his own with the other chickens.  He moved to his permanent farm home shortly after I took this last photo. So, he has lived his first week.  Under other circumstances, he would not have made it, but a twist of fate and he has enjoyed the luck of hatching in a 2nd grade classroom.

Not a pretty chicken is he? He was particularly hard to photograph because he was always in motion.  The lighting wasn’t helping me either.  While these aren’t my most technically good photos of the year, this was the most interesting storyline to develop in this year’s life cycle unit.

Cheers!

Everyone, including the chickens, are on the move

It’s been a busy few weeks in my household, and I’ll end this post with a few thoughts on where this blog is headed.  Before I get to that though, I thought that this week’s photo challenge, on the move, was the perfect time to share a few chicken photos.  Those of you who read my last post know that I am photographing a life cycle unit that is being taught in a 2nd grade classroom.

These photos show a bit of what the set-up looks like:

ISO 640 50mm 0ev f/3.5 1/100

ISO 640 50mm 0ev f/3.5 1/320

ISO 1250 50mm 0ev f/2.5 1/50

Over the weekend the eggs were checked one last time and then went on lockdown.  That means that the incubator will not be opened for several days while the chickens are hatching. One of the things that happens while preparing for lockdown is that we can look at the inside of the egg using a process called candling, basically to check on the health of the egg.  Here is a healthy egg:

ISO 3200 50mm 0ev f/2.5 1/50

This one is blank, meaning no chicken in here:

ISO 3200 50mm 0ev f/2.5 1/125

The candling photos were taken on Saturday, just before lockdown, by Monday the first three chickens had hatched.  This photo is of an egg that is getting ready to hatch, there is a small break in the shell, so soon there should be a chicken:

ISO 3200 50mm 0ev f/4 1/200

The shell that is completely discarded belongs to the yellow colored chicken in this photo:

ISO 3200 50mm 0ev f/4 1/200

The darker colored chicken is a bantam chicken.  The children named that chicken Trouble because it was messing around a bit with his incubator mates.

The photos I chose for this post are all unedited, as for the purpose of this post, I was just telling a story and not focused as much on the art of the actual photo.  When I get to the editing process, I will be doing some cropping and sharpening.  The photos taken through the incubator window are a bit tricky due to reflections.

As I alluded to in the title of the post, the chickens are not the only ones on the move. I have not been posting as frequently in the past few weeks because I started a new job and finished a school semester at the same time. So, this is my acknowledgement that I am “behind” on my blog.  This means that I may have a comment of yours to approve or perhaps you have visited here lately and I have not returned the visit.  As I am writing this, I can see that I have 777 visits to make. Thats a lot for me, but having a cup of tea and visiting blogs is actually my favorite way to start the day. I am hoping to get caught back up in the next week or so.

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know that I have been taking a Photoshop class this past year.  I am happy to say that I turned in my final project and took an exam yesterday. My next class is on Adobe Illustrator, so I am not certain how much of that class will turn up on this blog.  I am grateful to all of you who have offered me support and encouragement over this past year.  I’m very much looking forward to getting caught up and then continuing with this blog over the summer.

Questions or comments about the chickens or about this blog in general? feel free to leave them below!

Cheers!