{"id":20761,"date":"2013-12-18T06:18:08","date_gmt":"2013-12-18T13:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=20761"},"modified":"2013-12-18T06:18:08","modified_gmt":"2013-12-18T13:18:08","slug":"the-phantom-pheasant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/12\/18\/the-phantom-pheasant\/","title":{"rendered":"The Phantom Pheasant"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday morning I was able to catch a few Ring-necked Pheasants out in the open\u00a0at Farmington Bay.\u00a0 This\u00a0shot reminded me that things aren’t always as they appear.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"ring-necked<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a01\/1250, f\/9, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0At first glance this looks like a simple\u00a0image of a pheasant running through the snow but\u00a0that’s not the case.\u00a0 Look more carefully at the\u00a0bird and see how long it takes you to figure out what’s really<\/em> going on…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It’s not a pheasant.\u00a0 It’s two<\/strong><\/em> pheasants, one\u00a0in front of the other.\u00a0 If you’re like me the first “double” your eye might pick up on is the\u00a0extra tail.\u00a0 Then I noticed the top of the back\u00a0of the rear bird, then the back of its head which lines up\u00a0to match\u00a0the head of the\u00a0pheasant in front.\u00a0 Even the two neck rings are in perfect position to fool the eye (in fact I think they might be key to doing so).\u00a0 And the feet of the rear bird can’t be seen to give it away.\u00a0 You can<\/em> see parts of the shadow of the mostly hidden pheasant but my brain didn’t cue into that at first.\u00a0 I’ve done no unusual processing here – nothing cloned in or cloned out.\u00a0 All I did was crop, do a minor exposure adjustment and sharpen the bird(s).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"ring-necked<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/1250, f\/9, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0For a little perspective on the situation, here’s an image of the two birds running in the snow that was taken 4 clicks before the previous one.\u00a0 The far bird was running faster than the one in front…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"ring-necked<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/1250, f\/9, ISO 500, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

and passed it up four frames later.<\/p>\n

When I was reviewing these images I knew of course that I had been photographing two birds but when I came to the first image presented here\u00a0it really threw my brain for a loop for a few seconds until I figured out what really happened to the “phantom” pheasant.<\/p>\n

But perhaps your brain is more nimble than mine at interpreting optical illusions…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday morning I was able to catch a few Ring-necked Pheasants out in the open at Farmington Bay. This shot reminded me that things aren’t always as they appear.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20763,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,630],"tags":[397,1621,562,560,286],"class_list":["post-20761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-ring-necked-pheasants","tag-farmington-bay","tag-optical-illusion","tag-phasianus-colchicus","tag-ring-necked-pheasant","tag-snow"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/ring-necked-pheasant-8475-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-5oR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20761\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}