This beautiful bird, a Lilac-Breasted Roller, is the focus of a synchronicity that occurred to photographer Thomas Chamberlin. He was kind enough to allow us post the photo and his story.
This gorgeous bird is native to Africa. When you think of an African safari you don’t really think much about birds(except maybe ostriches), and when you are on safari your day is pretty much dictated by the most impatient person in your vehicle. Once one person has had enough and is ready to move on it feels self-indulgent to belabor the current situation and it is not long before you must move on.
On the day this photograph was made I was alone in the Land Rover with another bird enthusiast and author of several books on birds, Wayne Lynch. The third photographer scheduled to be in our vehicle that day was indisposed with a bad case of Montezuma’s Revenge after having somehow ingested the bacterial milieu that is the water of Africa. I remember Wayne saying how happy he was that we would be able to spend some time on birds that day since there was nobody else in the vehicle to appease. We scoured the river banks for birds in the trees. We stopped and shot flight photographs of vultures as they landed at a carcass. When we came upon this roller, perched so handsomely on his perch in soft light, we were both of the same mind. We would stay with him until he either did a wing stretch or flew away.
At no other time on the trip were we ever in the position to watch a little bird that long. People want to go find a cheetah, a lion, a hyena. It took about twenty minutes of perseverance before he did this wing stretch, waiting, of course, until Wayne turned to say something to the driver. By the time he heard my shutter firing it was over.
On one of our last days in Kenya we all decided on our best photograph of the trip, displayed it on our laptops, and set the laptops on the dining room tables to share with the others and the staff and guides. I displayed this photograph out of the 7,000 photographs I had kept during our stay. The camp staff that had fed us and made our stay a delight all timidly approached at first, then excitedly pointed and laughed and thoroughly enjoyed getting to see the photographs we had been going out morning and evening to capture. Sometimes we forget to include them.
When I got home this was one of the first photographs I optimized in Photoshop and uploaded to my Digital Railroad (now defunct; I’ve moved to Photo Shelter), and personal web sites and to Flickr. Out of the blue I got an e-mail from the photo editor of Birder’s World. He had found my photograph on line and wanted to use it for an article on African birds. It made the cover of the February, 2008 issue. I had published photographs on the Birder’s World on-line site before, but the photo editor for the magazine was not familiar with me.
Happy little coincidences that someone would get sick and I would get a day to work on bird photographs in Africa, in a vehicle shared with another bird enthusiast. That a photo editor would somehow find my image out of the thousands of roller images that come up with a Google search (I looked). I have a hard time with believing in fate, kismet, the Lord’s Will. But there seems to be some kind of energy out there that that can sometimes be tapped into, if only for a brief moment. The Buddhists believe that becoming a spiritual master means being in that energy always. I’m not likely to achieve that in this lifetime, but it’s fun to ride the wave of synchronicity when it happens.
Every few days, I click on Thomas’s website to see what new photos/stories he has posted. I’m always astonished at this man’s creativity, at his eye for beauty.
– Trish