Egg on my face

If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing it right. It’s easy to take that too far, though. At least, it is for me.

Regular readers know I rarely do anything halfway. Sure, if there are two approaches of equal quality for doing something I’ll nearly always opt for the easier one.

But to get a photo for a new book I went above and beyond to get something perfect. And when I say above and beyond, I’m talking about effort approaching OCD levels. The project in question is a window-mounted nesting shelf of the type favored by robins. I knew months ago that I’d being doing this photo, so I found an empty robin’s nest this spring and stashed it away till needed.

The project done, I set up and took the photos. They came out great except for one thing: To be a perfect photo there simply had to be robin’s eggs in the nest. So I got some and re-shot the photos.

Fantastic photo, right? And I’m sure you agree that redoing it with eggs is the touch that makes the photo perfect. Oh, but what I had to do to get those eggs.

Robin nesting season is over here so I couldn’t get any in the wild (and it would have been wrong to rob a nest). Easter is long gone so I couldn’t find those robin’s egg candies, although those never look like real robin’s eggs anyway. The craft store has fake eggs for decorating, but the sizes/shapes were way off even if the color had been right. Couldn’t find them online. So I did what any self-respecting woodworker would do. I turned some on the lathe, then played with paint until mixing up the exact shade of blue.

In the end I probably spent far more time on those eggs than I did building the project itself. But despite the brief foray into OCD territory, when I look at the photo I’m glad I did all that extra work.

I think.

A.J.