More than a bird: a living drill. That's the black woodpecker in brief. Essential element for the renewal and the biodiversity of the forest environment (the large holes it digs for nesting - being the only one capable to do it in that size - are reused by several other species of birds and even some mammals), I saw him dipping its beak in a trunk half a meter in diameter, working it as if it were of salt dough. In these very days from that oval hole young red crests of chicks ready to fly are eyeing... a photo I'm not going to take: like almost all of the pictures at nest (of any species) it would feel as the old same deja vù, even beyond any ethical doubt; besides, the aesthetic and emotional potential that could be included would be miserable, far from deserving the slightest form of potential annoyance. I'm posting instead a shot made during a casual encounter: the very hard and poor backlight let itself to be converted without a protest in a B&W high contrast image, a technique I used to love a lot already in my (very distant) days in the darkroom, when I manipulated sheets of photomechanical film among stinking chemical mixtures... thinking about it now, in the Instagram era, seems a lot like a picture from medieval alchemy. Yet no retouching software is able to give me back the same feelings. Who knows, maybe it was just me being different back then. Young, for a start. |
All site contents are: © Vitantonio Dell'Orto, all rights reserved worldwide. The Chronicles of Särna, and other stories from the North.
I live in Sweden, in Särna (Dalarna). The Chronicles are a photo diary about the nature (but not just) here around and from all the Scandinavian areas where my photo job takes me.
My book: "My Sweden - Tales from an Italian photographer in the North" is available in the bookstores and by the publisher.
Archives
October 2018
Categories
All
|