Jenny Hough and her friend Jean had one purpose in mind when they made the day drive to Murrells Inlet, South Carolina’s Huntington Beach State Park. They wished to capture numerous images of the nearby fauna and birds.
When they came across an egret perched on the railing of the boardwalk and it appeared that he had no plans to go, Hough made the decision to take advantage of the situation.
“My friend Jean and I were within 3 feet of the bird, and as it was now too close for my camera with a zoom lens, I took out my cell phone to take a photo,” Hough told The Dodo. “I placed the cell phone on the railing, but as I was concentrating on the egret, I didn’t notice at first that Jean had walked about 15 to 20 feet further along the boardwalk to focus on another bird.”
Hough took a few pictures before she realized that Jean was accidentally in the shot and then switched to a different angle. Once she’d gotten a bunch of photos of the egret she moved along, figuring she’d check out the results later.
While the two were eating lunch, Hough started looking through the pictures she’d taken and discovered that the ones Jean had unintentionally wandered into were actually the funniest ones she had ever taken.
Because of a trick of perspective, it looked as if the egret was a gigantic bird, and that Jean was about to be his afternoon snack.
“It looks like Jean is about to be eaten by a mutant shorebird,” Hough said.
She decided she needed to share the photo with the world and posted it online, and everyone got quite a kick out of it.
If only I had done that on purpose, Hough continued, “it seems to have really tickled a lot of people, not to mention generated a discussion about employing forced perspective in images.”
Although it may have been a mistake, Hough now considers it to be one of her favorite images, and she is delighted that it made everyone who saw it smile.
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