A friend pointed out an article in the food section of the paper the other day that carried a headline: “Braising a parrot: Tidbits of history.” Of course that headline caught my attention. After reading it, though, I wasn’t too concerned about losing Bobo to the stew pot (I wonder if parrots taste like chicken?) because the parrot braising recipe from the first century B.C. was really for flamingoes and, only as an aside, did the ancient cookbook author mention the parrot option. What made me laugh out loud when I read the rest of the article was a quote from 18th Century French food writer Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin about someone who, upon being served grapes for dessert, said, “Thank you very much, but I am not accustomed to take my wine in the form of pills.” Of course after reading that, I couldn’t resist taking a photograph of a bunch of “wine pills” I had just bought. And, I couldn’t resist using my fisheye lens for this shot just to see what it would do. The interesting thing to me is that because the lens has such a wide angle, lots of light came into the shot from the top despite the solid background that surrounded the grapes with black up 40 inches. The fisheye effect makes the grapes in the back seem small but they were all the same size.
D800; Focal Length 10.5 (DX lens); ISO 100; f/2.8; 1/3 sec.
Really interesting effect with the fisheye! And your blog post title did capture my attention! The braised parrot- not so much- yuck!