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