Mike Foo, Pigeons II (DOCUMENTARY & STREET 2026)

I had an earlier entry that was called Pigeons a few years ago that I submitted for a few competitions. This time round coincidentally I found myself with a nice shot of .... yes, pigeons again. The only thing different is that I've recently switched to film and have been experimenting with different film stocks and pushing/pulling film development times. I wanted to learn how it is to deal with the intricacies of film photography - from releasing the shutter to developing the negatives in post. I wanted to understand how photographers of film's past learnt their trade. They had to juggle around with so many limitations - film ISO was limited to up to 3200, shutter speeds usually maxed out at 1/4000s. Auto focus, if your camera had, was slow and unpredictable. Colour rendering depended on what film stock you used. Pushing/Pulling film ISO and development times caused color shifts and gave each roll a stylistic look. There was no preview - you develop your film and figure out what you did right/wrong. Go out shoot again, refine your process and hope for the best. Rinse and repeat. Today we are pampered and take for granted what our earlier photographic peers had to struggle with but which also made them way better at this then we are. Better tools are great as they expand possibilities but limitations make better photographers. Pigeons II was shot on a test roll of Kodak Vision3 5203 50D. My wife and I had some time off and the winter sun was calling us to go to the city for a walk. A gathering of pigeons had cosied up to a father and daughter at the park benches at Forrest Chase that's familiar to all Perthians. I fired a few frames which I thought were satisfactorily "OK, so-so" but in retrospect looked a bit boring - colors were there, pigeons were there but no movement, no life and not much of a story. As I was about to leave, a mischievous boy (to my advantage) ran at the pigeons, stomping his foot. He startled the pigeons and upset the calm and provided the missing movement and life. All around me, the pigeons took off in flight and fright. I instinctively fired off a few shots - actually managing two shots in succession from my old 80s Nikon F4, whaddya expect? I could hear a mother apologising for the boy's action to the people seated at the benches but I'm gladly walking off - ask my wife, she could see the telling smile on my face. Back home, I developed the film in ECN2 chemistry and scanned it with my prized Nikon Coolscan 5000. This submission is the better of the two shots and which fortunately survived my failure to wash off the Remjet as I thought it was the newer AHU based - a bit of a long story. This was the extent of the laborious process. But the experience is rewarding and I enjoyed the process. Now savour the result.

Images have been resized for web display, which may cause some loss of image quality. Note: Original high-resolution images are used for judging.