Birds in Space
April 3, 2017
Barcelonian photographer Xavi Bou has a deep-seated passion for birds and their ability to fly freely. In his ongoing photographic project titled Ornitographies, Bou utilizes a non-invasive, self-mastered variation of chronophotography in order to capture the marvelous shapes and patterns generated during the course of birds’ flight. His technique allows him to make the invisible visible, crystallizing the states of past, present and future all in one frame.
“I wished to know what the shape of their flight in the sky would look like if our perception of time was different,” Bou says of the series.
Bou’s admiration for birds stems from his long and unforgettable childhood walks with his grandfather through the Llobregat Delta, one of Earth’s most flourishing wetlands and the home of many different varieties of bird species. Since then, his passion has continued to grow, eventually becoming the focus of his profession. The title of the series, Ornitographies is derived from the words “bird” and “writing” translated in Greek to “Ornis” and “Graphia.” Bou considers his work to be at the intersection art and science, relating the images to a type visual poetry.
April 3, 2017 at 2:41 pm
April 3, 2017 at 2:42 pm
April 3, 2017 at 10:43 pm
The third last and last photos shown here are similar to photos I used to inadvertantly capture on my trail cameras when researching feral species in the Australian Alps. In my case they were night time photos of microbats, whose wingbeats were about 4-5 times faster than the shutter speed of the cameras. They’d appear as a white flash but with that spiral like pattern. Crazy UFO people call them “alien rods”
April 4, 2017 at 2:49 am
Beautiful and spectacular!
April 10, 2017 at 4:49 am
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