Description
A stork sits atop an old Spanish bell tower against totality. Single exposure, not photoshopped or ai, of course.
Liron Gertsmen and I have collaborated on several projects now, and when success starts to feel iffy I often quip half joking, half serious: "If we don't fail at least sometimes, then we aren't aiming high enough." This time we made our biggest gamble yet on a single stork nest relying on the eclipse to bring the stork to roost earlier than normal. The bell tower was miraculously at exactly the west-northwest angle to be a literal perfect front profile. The only one of its kind out of hundreds if not thousands of churches/castles we collectively scouted. We had more reliable options available, but had to go for it.
Less than two minutes from totality, ne'er a stork to be seen, for a moment I thought we finally "aimed high enough". But then as the light got the eerie dim, we spotted our bird. Flying from a distance, slowly but directly making their way to star in our composition.
If this were fiction I'd have called it cheesy.
For me much of the magic in art and photography lies in what feels just beyond my understanding and control, and for that reason the shots that barely happened are my favorites.