Mesmerising Murmurations
Picture this. The UK is in its third Coronavirus lockdown. It’s the middle of winter, mid-February. Not that you’d want to go outside much, but due to self-isolating, I haven’t even been able to go outside now for almost 10 days. With nothing to photograph but the 4 walls around me, I’m feeling extremely creatively stagnant. It was a photographer’s worst nightmare.
Staring out the window that evening, watching the world go by, a swoosh of black caught my eye. I watched on in amazement as the distant shape warped and flowed over the rooftops, silhouetted against the twilight sky. The murmuration ebbed and flowed, growing as more starlings joined the dance and shrinking as they dived down to roost for the night. It was a sight to behold. Creativity juices flowing again, I grabbed my camera and started shooting.
Limited to viewing from the upper-floor windows of my house, I ran around frantically trying to capture the different shapes and movements of the starlings. They circled around the house for almost an hour, allowing me to experiment with different lenses and perspectives; the hibernating tree across the street and early crescent moon made for some fantastic compositions.
As the sunlight faded and the starlings dwindled I called it a night and felt fortunate to have been witness to such a spectacle.
To my excitement, I found that for the next fortnight Sawtry Village would be host to this show each and every evening and it grew more and more astonishing as the nights went by. I sat and watched it from my windows until I was finally released from isolation and able to watch it from the playing field, where you could see them dance over the whole village and the sunset was truly remarkable.
Having photographed the starings and their shapes to death, I wanted to try and capture the movement of the starlings in a way that a single image simply couldn’t, so a bit of research, trial and error and video editing wizardry, I was able to create this…
The irony of all of this is that during my longest and deepest creative rut, I was able to create some of the most creative work I’ve ever produced. I’ve learned that inspiration, motivation and action are a cycle, not a process. The simple act of “doing” can lead to inspiration and motivation to do more; I shouldn’t wait to feel motivated, I should ‘do’ to feel inspired and motivated when my next creative rut inevitably comes around.
Hopefully whatever happens next doesn’t leave such a mess on my car though.
