You may not realize it but those pigeons flying so poetically in front of the lens of a camera they're not there by accident.. If the film was made in Boston chances are I was somewhere in the background with pigeons all stuffed In my jacket. Ustabee...... 20 years ago, if a movie director called and needed pigeons next Thursday at 4:00 AM in Charlestown it was a fairly simple matter to ask my son in law to get me 100 pigeons underneath the bridge is on route 95 which is where they all slept I paid him a dollar a pigeon and it did not take him very long at all.
I would take them to Charlestown stuff them in my shirt wait till I was told to throw them in the air then probably they would make it back to whatever bridge they came from because pigeons are like that and I'd come home and take a shower with lice powder because pigeons are like that too.
Fast forward to maybe 10 years ago the animal rights people --------I am on both sides. of most animal questions----- and this one regarding pigeons----- I thought it was stretching the practical aspect of animal management and mismanagement ,,these pigeons started out. free living up and down route 95.. and I released them to a free living about 20 miles South on route 95.
this was determined to be cruel ------I certainly didn't want to be that so starting about 10 years ago all the pigeons that I used in commercials were banded ... that is they had little plastic ring around one leg with a number on it and the pigeon society wherever they are could tell whose pigeon that was so I was only to use banded pigeons -----which was no big deal---- but put my son-in-law out of business and I started borrowing or rather renting the homing pigeons from anyone in the area and it worked out very nicely.
the only hitch was I had to stop before I got to the location for shooting and check every bird.. and if I had any without a band I had to throw them in the air immediately and proceed with only banded ones ... usually..... whether they were banded or unbanded they got home before I did in Boston traffic.
A quick rundown on the price of pigeons 20 years ago when you caught pigeons and did whatever you wanted with them there was a market for live pigeons for I believe it was pregnant women.. From some specific country.. who's diet was supposed to contain pigeons which had recently been alive.. there was a dealer in Woburn who would buy leftovers from me for a dollar.. the same dollar I had paid my son-in-law to catch him in the first place. There was no shortage of pigeons.
And then there was the guy in north Beverly who raised racing pigeons and at nearly $1000 a bird -----he gave up teaching and went to pigeons for a good living....
Thus endeth the commercial photographing industry....
