Locked Down Looking Up started as a series of images made over time from a fixed point—outside my front door—during the San Francisco Bay Area’s lockdown to slow the spread of Covid-19. Multiple shots were combined to show the flight trails of birds, insects, and bats. While most everything in my life has come to a standstill, up in the air, there was still a lot going on. Later, when I started to be able to move around a little more, I began to explore other locations.

 

To be clear: I don't claim to have invented this technique. I'm not even the only artist doing it with birds. This is my exploraton of a process—photo stacking or composite imaging to record flight trails—that's been around for a long time, going all the way back to Edweard Muybridge before the turn of the last century.