Thank you Cindy. Yep, it's an abalone shell. It was the nearest, best available thing I could find to anchor the feather in an upright position (there was a light breeze blowing and this just seemed to work best). I wanted to capture the sun as well, but it ended up just outside the frame. I guess I saw the black feather, and just decided to photograph it filtering the sun to continue on with the raven theme :). --Melanie (mlynn)