Sterna Paradisaea is the Latin name for Arctic Tern (Kría in Icelandic).
This image is made from 50 individual photographs, 49 bird shots and 1 sky shot. I think this image took me some 100 hours of work, planning the image, taking the shots and lot of photoshop work.
I took all of the photos, the sky also, at the same time of the day between 19:45 and 20:45. Every shot in this image was sharp in the beginning and all of the Arctic terns were taken with my 100-400mm Canon lens and I took the sky shot with my 17-40mm lens. I placed the birds without them "touching" each other and without them "touching" the outline of the frame. I didn't want people to question it if this is a fake, it was supposed to be obvious. Somehow, many people didn't notice that and just thought that this was a lucky shot!
I reduced the size of the birds in steps and grouped them in few layers and then blurred each layer. I blurred the layer with the smallest birds the most and the layer with the one big bird and the next layer after that I didn't blur. Then I blurred the sky layer the most of it all.
I had this one large, I enlarged it to 26"x50" (66x127 cm). It was digitally enlarged on Kodak Endura Ultra matt paper.
The file was pretty big, it was 247mb in tiff format. The resolution was 254 pixels/inch making it 6600 x 12700 pixels.
I love how you have an idea in your mind, spend hundreds of hours executing it, and then someone who you've never even heard of tells you how you could have done it better? Crazy.
It's amazing. I have wondered about comping multiple bird shots together, but nothing on this scale. The shot complimenting it in your presentation are great too.
If you had to do it again, would YOU change anything?
I think this would be even more effective if you let some of the birds bleed out of the frame. It would cast doubt in the mind of the viewer as to whether this really is a massive flock!
As it stands (they're all beautifully shot) it looks what it is - a multiple paste-up of birds - but this may be what you intended??
I like the pic, but the first second I saw it I thought something is wrong with it. Another second I realised it was made of plenty small ones.
Then you comment reveiled the truth.
I like it really, only it look VERY fake. And that's for two reasons (sorry if that was your initial intention):
1. The birds do not overlay, which would be very fortunate to capture,
2. Non of the birds touches the border.
Still, very impressive in terms of time spent and work envolved.
Wu
This is already in the 'Photographer's Comment':
I placed the birds without them "touching" each other and without them "touching" the outline of the frame. I didn't want people to question it if this is a fake, it was supposed to be obvious.
I wasn't trying to make a real scene, If I would have done that, I think this could have looked just like one another picture taken up to the skies of Arctic Terns and wouldn't be half as interesting. It took me a lot of time to decide the positions of the birds to make an interesting 'flood' through the image and something that would not distract the eye. I had this enlarged to 50" wide for the exhibition and in that size it has much more impact than a smaller size or some screen size.
I like the pic, but the first second I saw it I thought something is wrong with it. Another second I realised it was made of plenty small ones.
Then you comment reveiled the truth.
I like it really, only it look VERY fake. And that's for two reasons (sorry if that was your initial intention):
1. The birds do not overlay, which would be very fortunate to capture,
2. Non of the birds touches the border.
Still, very impressive in terms of time spent and work envolved.
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