![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/ferruginous-hawk-5740-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"ferruginous-hawk-5740-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\nAmputating body parts in photography is one thing but it’s something else altogether when you do it to yourself. And your\u00a0guillotine is a very sharp\u00a0knife instead of a camera.<\/p>\n
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1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 320, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n I’ve often complained on Feathered Photography about clipping or cutting off body parts of birds in my photos, particularly in flight and takeoff shots where it’s so very\u00a0easy to do. It’s always frustrating when I do it and I was especially upset when it happened with this spectacular Ferruginous Hawk at takeoff.<\/p>\n I think this would have been very close to a “perfect” shot (whatever that is) if I hadn’t clipped\u00a0those wingtips. So it’s painful and embarrassing\u00a0to admit, especially after yesterday’s post where I featured a photo of\u00a0a Yellow Warbler with a cut-off wing,\u00a0that\u00a0precisely at noon yesterday\u00a0I cut off the end of one of my own\u00a0fingers.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n I did it while opening this package of new bank checks\u00a0I received in the mail. And stupidly I used this monster knife to do it\u00a0instead of a pair of scissors as suggested by the graphic at the top of the package. I cut the end of the finger clean off – it wasn’t even still hanging by a thread of tissue. Thankfully it wasn’t very much of my finger but the piece I lost was significantly thicker than just\u00a0all the skin layers. I saw some tissues that I’d only seen once before on myself (I used to spend a lot of time operating a table saw if that tells you anything).<\/p>\n So why did I use the knife (a huge one at that) instead of something safer? I just wasn’t thinking. This knife is part of a complete set my wife and I received as a wedding gift over 30 years ago. Since I’m no longer married and I love to cook for myself and others I spend a lot of time in the kitchen. I use those knives every day so I take good care of them and I sharpen them regularly (they’re Chicago Cutlery, made back when they still made quality knives). When I need to cut something I instinctively reach for them because they’re always so sharp and they’re handy. Not always a good idea…<\/p>\n I’ll spare you a photo of my bandaged finger. It isn’t pretty.<\/p>\n So why\u00a0am I spilling my guts about all this on my bird photography blog? For the time being I almost can’t type on my keyboard. Last night I tried using that finger and typing through the pain but it just made it bleed again all over the keyboard. It’s taken me an incredible amount of time just to type this much and correct all my typos.<\/p>\n So for the next few days my posts are likely to be unusually short and lacking the stories I like to tell and the explanations I like to go into.<\/p>\n Maybe that’ll be a relief for some but either way\u00a0I thought I should give my readers a heads up.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n PS – It’s the index finger on my left hand. Thankfully it isn’t my shutter finger! And why do they call it the “index” finger anyway? Just because we point\u00a0with it??\u00a0I always wonder about stuff like that…<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Amputating body parts in photography is one thing but it’s something else altogether when you do it to yourself. And your guillotine is a very sharp knife instead of a camera.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/knife-0284b-ron-dudley.jpg\")
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