With muscles implicit, flamingo preening momentarily evokes an abstract sun obscured by a smoke-strewn sky—becomes bird aswirl, a freshet, an eddy, a streaming whirlpool of gradations of color, a perfect metaphor for fluidity and vorticity and complex curvature and the manifold geometries of flowing movement and flamboyant existence. Soon she will unfurl all that potential energy, transition, whirl her mainspring neck up and out like a dancer’s flung shawl—instantly become a plumed bailaora, Flamenco personified.

Flamingo Preening (photograph) © by Elaine Soulé

All rights reserved. Image appears here with photographer’s permission.

Bio: Elaine Soulé

Bio: Roy J. Beckemeyer