Congratulations to Neff Conner of Bedford, the winner of the Flickr Photo of the Week contest. Neff has won our contest multiple times. His last win was back in January 2016. He follows last week’s winner, Steven Haal of Dallas.

If you would like to participate in the Flickr Photo of the Week contest, all you need to do is upload your photo to our Flickr group page. It’s fine to submit a photo you took earlier than the current week, but we are hoping that the contest will inspire you to go out and shoot something fantastic this week to share with Art&Seek users. If the picture you take involves a facet of the arts, even better. The contest week will run from Tuesday to Monday, and the Art&Seek staff will pick a winner on Friday afternoon. We’ll notify the winner through FlickrMail (so be sure to check those inboxes) and ask you to fill out a short survey to tell us a little more about yourself and the photo you took. We’ll post the winners’ photo on Tuesday.

Now here’s more from Neff.

Title of Photo: “Survivor”

Equipment: Sony a6000

Tell us more about your photo: I’ve been photographing pigeons around town regularly for about a year and a half. When I see one that stands out, I’ll attempt to capture their personality with a portrait style photo. This particular pigeon caught my eye because she was the only one of several that didn’t fly away as a DART train came roaring out of the tunnel at Mockingbird Station. It wasn’t until I’d snapped several shots that I noticed her right leg was missing. My heart sunk as I wondered what trauma she had endured. I stepped closer to get this shot, expecting her to take off as I approached. She didn’t move. In fact, she seemed curious about what I was doing, cocking her head toward me, then side-to-side as if she might get a better angle with one eye or the other. At this point, I stopped feeling sorry for her and felt a sense of awe for her bravery in such close proximity to me. You might think that lacking a leg would make one more skittish, but it was apparent to me that it made this pigeon fearless. I have named her Tammy after U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth.