This photo was taken right in front of my house. My terrace opened onto a field where a beautiful dead tree stood. This served as a permanent perch for a crowd of birds! For a week, a group of starlings had taken up residence there. I spent three consecutive evenings marveling at the superb ballet of their comings and goings, before the idea was born to try to make a beautiful image of them. Contemplation above all.
On the fourth evening, I went into the field to immortalize this beautiful moment. I sat down in the grass to highlight the tree and the birds against the sky, which that evening was very clear. This is why I opted for backlighting with overexposure. This technique allowed me to make the sky even brighter while keeping the tree and birds in Chinese shadow. I was lucky that they all flew away not in the same direction, but “in a bouquet”, thus recreating the illusion of foliage, bringing this tree back to life.
I attach a lot of importance to taking my photos directly when shooting for a minimum of post-processing. In post-processing, I just had to change the photo to black and white. I then added a little contrast, slightly raised the whites, and lowered the blacks to accentuate this “Indian ink” effect.
