The beauty of photographs is that they can capture special moments. Many photographers dream of capturing that “one in a million” photo. Though there are a plethora of amazing shots recorded by photographers all over the world, there are those rare and remarkably surprising shots captured that will not be duplicated. Some professional photographers take time to set up their cameras to hopefully capture a remarkable shot. But some lucky ones capture these photos by chance, they just happen to be in the right place at the right time.
Fortunately, this happened to Daniel Biber, a professional wildlife photographer from Germany. He actually saw an amazing natural phenomenon but failed to capture it on his camera even after several shots. His patience and determination brought him back to the scene, where he continued to take photos. It was only when he got home that he realized he finally captured that once in a lifetime photo that he was hoping to get.
The place was Spain’s Costa Brava, and the phenomenon was the gathering of a huge flock of starlings. The time was just before sunset, where the starlings would start creating shapes as they flew around, this is called murmuration. It is not an unusual occurrence, but sometimes the shapes they create are startling, to say the least. The large group of starlings over the Costa Brava moving in a coordinated way, continued to morph into different shapes, and in a few seconds changed into another shape, and so on. They do these basically to confuse predators, and there is safety in numbers. Biber tried for several days to capture the starlings in full flow, and finally it paid off.
“I’ve tried to photograph the starlings but it never worked out as well as I hoped for,” he explains. “I eventually drove to the spot everyday for four days in a row in order to capture them. I picked a spot where I thought they would turn up and picked a matching foreground and backdrop in order to put them in a scene.” Biber’s patience and creativity paid off, as he further explains: “Only when I checked the pictures on the computer later, I realized what formation the starlings had created. I was so concentrated on taking pictures at the time that I hadn’t realized that the starling murmuration had created a giant bird in the sky.”
The unique and amazing photo won Biber a prize in an international photography competition. The photos he captured are what lots of photographers dream about – the one in a million shot. But only a few are fortunate enough to capture such amazing and incredible photos. Patience is definitely needed, but just sometimes, mother nature reveals a unique gem that is unexpected. Who knows, you may one day have the experience and privilege to witness these amazing phenomena. Hopefully you have a camera to capture it, so others may have the same privilege to experience it.
