‘I’d seen this flock of birds flying in circles on the similar time every day’: Raghuvamsh Chavali’s finest cellphone image | Images

Raghuvamsh Chavali was born in Hyderabad, India, and now calls Canada – or extra particularly Guelph in Ontario – his residence. He describes his adopted metropolis as “a peaceful and friendly place, with a mix of heritage buildings and modern life”. It additionally proved a great backdrop for his prolonged photographic sequence Wings Over Concrete, which explores the presence and motion of birds in city environments.

Before he took this picture, one cloudy afternoon in downtown Guelph, Chavali had been monitoring this explicit flock of pigeons for a number of weeks. “I was in search of the natural patterns of birds, and I’d seen this flock flying in circles around the buildings near a train station at the same time each day. They moved in a tight, repeated loop, and on this day the light was soft and just right to capture their movement clearly,” he says. He utilised his cellphone digital camera’s slo-mo mode “to create a visual that almost feels like it was drawn with light. Their flight formed a fluid, layered pattern, like an S-shaped ribbon floating in space.”

Chavali instantly knew he’d captured one thing particular, changing the picture to black and white to take away distractions and emphasise texture. He notes a “kind of visual poetry and a reminder that wonder can be found in quiet, overlooked places. These birds have adapted to concrete spaces we have built over their habitats, yet they continue to move through the city with elegance and ease.”