Columba: In Flight

Urban pigeons, winter concrete. Banking turns, blurred wings, outstretched hands. Six frames of a bird everyone ignores doing things nothing else can. Pigeons are the least glamorous subject in photography, which is exactly why they're interesting. These were shot on cracked pavement in a city square where crowds rush past without looking down. The birds work the concrete like it's their territory — pecking, clustering, taking off in bursts that last half a second. Getting useful frames meant standing still while everyone else moved, waiting for a wing angle or a launch that had shape to it. Every frame is high-contrast black and white. The monochrome strips the scene down to motion and form — pigeon against building, wing blur against sharp stone, feathers catching flat winter light. Color would have added nothing; the grey birds on grey concrete needed contrast, not palette. The motion blur is intentional on most frames — it gives the wings energy and separates the frozen background from the moving bird. The hardest shots were the ones with people in them — the gloved hand reaching up, the legs moving through the flock. Timing two unpredictable subjects at once is mostly luck filtered through patience. You shoot a lot, you miss a lot, and the frames where everything aligns feel disproportionately good because of how rare they are. Six frames from a winter afternoon. The kind of set that requires standing in one spot long enough that the pigeons stop caring about you. "I was really drawn to how those pigeons navigated the broken concrete—always pecking around, even with people rushing by. That one shot of the bird taking flight against the building felt special."