Photographic Composites Document the Mesmerizing Flight Trails of Vultures, Crows, and Bats

“Lockdown Vultures (Moab Mesa).” All images © Doris Mitsch, shared with permission

In Locked Down Looking Up, Bay Area photographer Doris Mitsch captures the swirling, shapeshifting flight patterns of birds and other winged creatures: a flock of vultures creates coils and whirls between rugged mesas, crows descend toward a forest in single-file trails, and gulls congregate above the sea in lengthy lines.

The ongoing project began early in 2020 when Mitsch set up a camera outside her front door and shot consecutive images of birds flying around her home. “While everything in my life has come to a standstill, up in the air, there is still a lot going on,” she writes. She’s since traveled along the California coast and to Moab’s desert landscapes capturing similar swarming phenomena featuring vultures, gulls, and crows.

Mitsch’s composites vary in length of time, number of birds, and total images combined, which ranges from 500 to 5,000. “One of my favorites, ‘Lockdown Vulture (Signature)’ shows just one vulture making slow circles over the course of about a minute,” Mitsch tells Colossal. “My other favorite, ‘Lockdown Vultures (Moab Mesa)’ shows about five minutes’ worth of 25 or so birds circling together.”

In addition to this series, Mitsch also shot a collection devoted to starlings’ murmurations, which you can see on her site. You might enjoy this bird-shaped swarm, too. (via swissmiss)

 

“Lockdown Vulture (Signature)”

“Lockdown Vultures (Moab Slope)”

“Lockdown Swallows (Hunting)”

“Lockdown Crows (Evening Commute)”

“Lockdown Crows (One Tree)”

“Lockdown Bats (Pas de Deux)”

“Lockdown Gulls (Sea Ranch)”

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Enchanting Photos Frame Meandering Industrial Relics Along Taipei’s Jianqing Historic Trail

All images © Masuki Rina, shared with permission

The Taipingshan National Forest Recreation Area in northern Yilan is one of Taipei’s prized ecological destinations for its mist-covered scenery and lush vegetation that thrives in the dewy environment. It’s also home to Jianqing Historic Trail, a winding pathway that follows abandoned sections of railways and crumbling trestles that are relics of the region’s past as a major logging hub. Taiwanese photographer Masuki Rina visited the overgrown tracks to document its ethereal and enchanting atmosphere in a captivating series, which shows fog hanging over the landscape, moss covering wooden ballasts, and foliage sprouting from nearly every inch of the frame.

Rina shot dozens of images from the trail, which she shares on Behance and Instagram, along with her other landscape and street photography. (via Plain Magazine)

 

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Bold Photographs by Yannis Davy Guibinga Explore Identity Through Color, Texture, and Lavish Fashions

“The First Woman” (2020) featuring Evangeli Anteros. All images © Yannis Davy Guibinga, shared with permission

Following his striking examination of the color black, Gabonese photographer Yannis Davy Guibinga returns to the bright, textured compositions he’s known for. His portraits and wider editorial shots center on single figures dressed in lavish gowns and coated with shimmering face paint, considering how garments, makeup, pose, and facial expression all impact identity. “By letting each image tell a different story and illustrate a unique experience, point of view, and perspective… (he) creates a world of powerful, beautiful, and dignified Africans regardless of gender performance, class, or sexual orientation,” a statement says.

Guibinga primarily hovers beneath his subjects when photographing as a way to further bolster the emotional impact of each shot. He explains:

Regarding angles, I try to have different ones in a story in order to have different perspectives but looking up at my subjects has become with time something that I do almost every time. It offers a way to see the subjects in a very grand and dignified way, and because I collaborate often with young fashion designers, I found that it is also a great way of showing off a garment while still telling a beautiful story with the composition.

Currently based in Montréal where he’s completing a master’s degree, Guibinga has four collections on view at Brick at Blue Star in San Antonio through February 3 and will show another at Galerie XII in Santa Monica opening on February 6. He’s also featured in the recently published book As We Rise: Photography from the Black Atlantic and has a few projects slated for the coming months, which you can follow on Instagram.

 

“Pigments” (2020) featuring Atlas Hapy. MUA by Amal Afoussi

“The First Woman” (2020) featuring Evangeli Anteros & Atlas Hapy

“LAGBAJA” (2021) featuring Béatrice

“Oma Ayiya” (2020) featuring Tracy Valentine. MUA by Amal Afoussi

“Multicolor” (2020) featuring Atlas Hapy

“Glowzi” (2017) featuring Glowzi

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Balloons, Plants, and Bubble Wrap Become Powerful Subversive Symbols in Alicia Brown’s Portraits

“Love notes from my father in a foreign land when the apple trees blossom” (2021), oil on canvas, 48 x 36 inches. All photos by Daniel Perales Studio, © Alicia Brown, shared with permission

In her new body of work What About the Men?, Jamaica-born, Sarasota-based artist Alicia Brown extracts and reenvisions elements of traditional portraiture. She recasts objects of cultural and social status, like the elaborate gowns and thick ruffled collars worn by wealthy aristocrats throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, by instead rendering her subjects in casual clothing like shorts and rubber flipflops with colorful latex balloons, plants, and plastic bubble wrap coiled around their necks.

Contemporary and subversive, Brown’s oil paintings are rooted in history and a reinvented use of symbols interpreted as power, control, celebration, adaptation, and survival. She explains:

As an artist from the Caribbean, Jamaica, which was colonized by Europe, presently there is still that system of classism that has its origin during slavery and colonialism in Jamaica that the natives have to navigate in order to fit into society. I have referenced the collar as an object that is European and replaced it with objects such as spoons, cotton swaps, shells, balloons, bubble wrap, and recently elements of nature. These collars adorned the neck of the models who are regular people and who are constantly going through a performance of creating an identity to gain acceptance.

Derived from a photograph of a friend, family member, or neighbor, each intimate portrait is set against a lush backdrop of foliage or in domestic scenes with encroaching plant and animal life. “Through my work, I hope to convey to the viewer to look beyond their eyes and to see themselves as the person represented in the painting, to share their world, and to come to the awareness that we share so much in common, we are all connected as beings,” the artist shares.

If you’re in Rochester, you can see What About the Men? through March 6 at UUU Art Collective. Otherwise, visit Brown’s site and Instagram.

 

“The Duke of Portmore-dad’s legacy” (2022), 48 x 36 inches

“The queen’s coronation” (2020), oil on canvas, 48 x 36 inches

“Male bird of paradise” (2021), oil on canvas, 64 x 42 inches

“You look just like your father” (2021), oil on canvas

“There is a race of men who do not fit in” (2021), oil on canvas, 48 x 36 inches

“Portrait of lady Cameal from Alva” (2020), oil on canvas, 28 x 36 inches

 

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Unearthly Plant Photos by Tom Leighton Highlight Nighttime Chemical Processes

All images © Tom Leighton, shared with permission

Otherworldly in appearance, Tom Leighton’s photographs center on stems and leaves that emit a luminous glow, unveiling their delicate structures and highlighting their chemical processes. His Variegation II series reveals the nightlife of foliage—Leighton focuses on plants from Cornwall, some of which he grows in his garden and others farther afield—and examines what humans might have been able to see if our night vision had evolved.

The ongoing project also explores the possibilities of color manipulation. After photographing the plants, Leighton digitally strips back their characteristic greenish hues, using dreamy fluorescent colors to represent the photosynthesis process. He tells Colossal:

Plants are incredible stores of energy. They grow towards anything which provides for them: nutrition, the moisture, the light, then they absorb, contain, and convert…The colours I have used in this series represent the light absorbed within the structure of the plants and its conversion to energy. Sometimes one small colour choice or different crop unlocks the potential of the image.

Leighton previously photographed Hong Kong and Tokyo, but COVID-19 shifted his work closer to home where he began documenting everyday greenery, focusing on their textures and details. “Many of the plants are quite common, and it was more about elevating and accentuating a complexity, which can so often be overlooked,” he says.

In addition to Variegation II,  Leighton is also working on a series named Kynance, which explores the geological history of one of Cornwall’s most dynamic coastlines. To view more of his work, visit his website and Behance. (via This Isn’t Happiness)

 

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A Trompe L’oeil Mural by Shozy Imagines a 3D Architectural Addition to an Apartment Building

All images courtesy of Urban Morpho Genesis, shared with permission

A concrete apartment building in Solnechnodolsk, Russia, seems to have added balconies, windows, and a few extra rooms in a trippy new mural by artist Danila Shmelev, aka Shozy. Created for the Urban Morpho Genesis festival, the massive optical illusion appears as a three-dimensional construction that juts out from the complex, despite lying flat on the corner walls. The Moscow-born artist says:

In Russia, we are all accustomed to the architecture of panel houses. Our eyes are so blurred that aesthetics are out of the question. With my work, I want to focus the viewer’s attention on a familiar landscape and show it from an unusual side, complementing the real ends of two five-story buildings with illusory geometry, so that they draw the eye of the viewer to the ordinary landscape, encouraging them to really consider it.

You can find more from Shozy and the festival on Instagram, and shop smaller trompe l’oeil works on canvas on Hiya.

 

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Rectangular Black Boxes Enclose Coiling Serpents in Guido Mocafico’s Disorienting Photos

Atheris squamigera. All images © Guido Mocafico, shared with permission

A puzzling blend of heads, tails, and scales, Guido Mocafico’s Serpens juxtaposes snakes’ coiled bodies with the tight confines of a small, rectangular box. The Italian photographer positions two or more slithering creatures against the black backdrops and shoots the composed images from overhead. Each reptile is so entwined that it’s difficult to tell them apart, resulting in a chaotic and disorienting mix of color, texture, and depth.

Mocafico is known for the distinct still lifes that define his commercial work and personal projects, which include striking series focused on organisms like anemones, jellyfish, and arachnids, to name a few. Explore an expansive archive of his photography on his site.

 

Elaphe taeniura friesi

Naja samarensis

Dendroaspis angusticeps

Top left: Coluber viridiflavus. Top right: Vipera ammodytes. Bottom left: Boa constrictor. Bottom right: Agkistrodon bilineatus taylori

Bitis rhinoceros

Top left: Crotalus polystictus. Top right: Agkistradon bilineatus bilineatus. Bottom left: Naja kaouthia albinos. Bottom right: Naja naja

Leiopython albertisi

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