Revealing the hidden beauty of bird flight

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so

what do you see here can you see

something recognizable

maybe birds

this is what i saw until one day i asked

myself a question

that led me to see the sky in this way

during this talk i will explain how they

dare of making visible

the hidden beauty of bird flights came

up

and how this has changed my life i grew

up

in a predator a city located near neltha

next to barcelona

this area is surrounded by urban

infrastructures such as the airport and

the port of barcelona

however it still preserves wetlands of

great natural interest

doing large parts of the importance of

this area as it passes for migratory

birds

my grandfather used to go out every

morning for a walk

in this landscape and he would write

down all the work he saw

from time to time he used to take me

with him

by doing so i discovered many different

spaces

on each one had a particular type of

call

and flight that make them recognizable

this exploration tricked me a patient

for nato that has been with me ever

since

i graduated geology but i was dedicated

myself professionally to my great

passion photography

i worked as a photographer assistant

until i created my own retouching studio

fortunately lack of work was never a

problem

but the growing frustration i feel

working with other out of photographs

surely was over the years my decision to

make my own photographic project grew

but it can be difficult to know what to

talk about or how to do it

it took me several years to figure out

that i have

wanted to express something it will have

to be something that made me unique

and that will allow me to share my

knowledge and passion with others

with this ideas in mind i realized that

if anything makes me particular among my

friends

it was my passion of looking at the sky

or while hacking

noticing animal treasures and to be

honest

they’re dropping soon observing one of

this tri set

i asked myself the question that would

be the seat

of my project what kind of stress

will birds live in the sky if this was

possible

it was then more than eight years ago

when i first visualized the

mysterious lines that were drawn in the

sky by

each bird flight why not make

them miserable now that my project was

starting to take off i have some doubts

has anyone done it before

the truth is that i didn’t think

anything about it

and how could i technically carry out

this project

after a research process i conclude that

the way

to achieve it will be to take many

photos per second to overlap them

into one image the most similar

reference

i found was etienne jude’s mario acronym

photography from 19th century

to obtain the image that he wanted he

had to take photographs against a black

background

and his technique consists in exposing

the same negative multiple times

on consecutive occasions this technical

solution

did not work for me as i wanted to take

the images outdoors

i had to figure out a technique to make

it possible

fortunately the technological advances

made since the 19th century

allowed me to find a way to blend frames

to overlap birds without altering the

background

and also to save myself from chasing

break grabbing marie’s photographic

rifle

the big difference between classical

chrono photography and my representation

is that the first was intended to be a

study of the movement of individuals

in each frame a different position of

the body was shown

and therefore an anatomical description

of the moment was obtained

however my aim was not to create

individual images as descriptive as the

position of the bird’s body

at the east stage of the flight but to

show the flight

as entity in itself as a continuum

i wanted to rebuild the aspect of pure

movement

i telling the perception of time and

with the sky as a canvas

it will be the birth that through their

choreography will rebel the height and

drawing

of their flights that’s why i had to

make

more photographs per second with the

purpose that between

each frame images will overlap until the

shape of the body

was lost making it unrecognizable

the resulting organic shape will let the

multiple readings and interpretation

depending on the observer

the conclusion was as follows to capture

such images

i will need to take pictures but rather

than to shot video sequences in slow

motion using

high resolution film cameras

after years of research and some

preliminary tests

and finally found my desired project

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ornithographies

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two more years pass it before i start to

fully develop an interface

by investing time and resourcing to

obtain images

that will give me enough confidence to

publish them

it was a fascinating time in which every

time i captured a new flight

i saw a totally new shape thanks to my

previous acknowledgement of ornithology

i was able to know what kinds of flight

different birds could make

and perhaps most important when and

where to find them

this is why a large part of the project

is based in barcelona

as is what a life and what i best know

how to locate its expenses

in general the birds i have recorded are

not exotic animals from

far away countries there are

usual common species in areas near to

where i live

as near as the roof of my own house in

some cases

the research led me to want to capture

on what the nature’s most spectacular

events

migrations there are several very

specific points in our planet

where big migration takes place forming

large flocks of birds impossible to see

in other circumstances

tariffs in the extreme source of the

iberian peninsula

is almost these points during the month

of

august large flocks of storks and

blankites

gated throw caused their litter more

than 10 kilometers of the strait of

thiruvartha

that separates europe from africa

i started planning this trip months in

advance with the intention of winning

the days

with a higher concentration of births

and the best conditions

but not everything always goes as planet

on the very day of river the wind began

to blow

so hard that it raised a fork over the

sea

preventing the bird from seeing africa

continent

and therefore stopping the immigration

in this first date i felt a great deal

of frustration

one group with nature is not easy but

with the right information and paintings

you can theoretically

get reversals the problem was

that i didn’t have much time left to

spend in that area

and i still had nothing at all the

mental images i made before leaving my

house

seemed very far away and the weather was

not getting any better

during the year of work on this project

i have

often faced frustration but i have

learned that

we can use this lack of control the

serendipity

to our advantage by adapting that we had

not anticipate

only in this way we can obtain results

that we have never imagined be possible

beforehand in this sense my experience

in starifah was paradigmatic

adversity led me to discover that in

some fields a few kilometers away

hundreds of red kites had gatorade

perched

on the run waiting for better conditions

to cross

every morning they will rise with the

wind to see if the conditions were any

better

and during these few moments they

honored their

names for they only move up and down

up and down with virtually no progress

from the point they were

until they decided decide to leave

this is the mice and i got if i had not

been open to everything that could

happen

i would never have through that a bird

like this

could make such a unique flight the next

piece i want to share with you

is a bridge that has one of the most

popular flights

due to the flow of the wave of the

spectacular clouds

they form in fact it’s such a peculiar

type of flight

that he has earned a name of it of

its own vulnerations over the last few

years

startling flocks have become became

one of the main working objects

from the beginning of the project once

one of the flights i had planned to

capture they took me years before i

could understand

their habits and therefore know where

and when to find them

i discovered that the starting flocks

together during the winter

and during the day they go in small

groups to fit in fields

it’s only a task that these groups

go to common areas to sleep and feel

protected

it is at this time that they form these

impressive groups

however it’s not enough for them to do

their famous dances

it’s necessary that at the precise

moment when they arrive

at the area where they will be spend the

night pearling fatcorns

appear with intention of attacking them

now

is when the starting will do their dents

in order to confuse the predator

we could say that the falcon models the

femoral sculpture

so in conclusion the final image is

the interaction between these two

species and the result

is this one

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going back to the history of this

project five years ago

once i had a set of images that i was

proud of

i found the strength to finally publish

ornithologists

then something wonderful happened from a

single digital publication

they gain a chain of publication that

makes them appear

in a few months in newspapers from all

over europe

like the guardian and even international

publication like cnn

or wireless among many others and then

finally

a childhood dream come true to publish a

full article in international print

edition

of national geographic today my work

has transcend the field of photography

and synergies have been generated with

other disciplines

such as architectural biology will mimic

dance

music a show in the piece play it

through this video composed by christina

datton

inspired by the images of the vlogs

that you have seen before

currently i’m fully dedicated to

ornithography creating new images

working on the publication of a book and

on research for future projects

this has been the history of ornithology

but beyond this

is a history of how people can find

their vocation

in a process that can last for years and

eventually

living from our own projects

i believe that we all have the right to

make a living doing

whatever we are passionate about

ornithography

does not contain explicit conservation

message

but its final objective hidden like the

sacred ways formed by the birth in the

skies

is to show the heightened beauty of nato

in order to promote admiration and

desire

to seek its conservation now i have a

five-year-old daughter

and i’m proud to be able to tell her to

delta and show her the same species

that my grandfather discovered me

in his day thank you grandpa

for those works i hope

that we have the ability as a species to

reduce your

human footprint on the planet and that

we can continue passing on to our future

generations

to love for the natural treasures around

us

thank you very much for your attention

and remember to stop

and look in the sky from time to time

because we could

possibly be missing a gift from nature