No, this is not a straightforward photograph; it is actually a low-tech combination of two photographs showing flocks of flying birds. The dark birds are red-winged blackbirds I photographed at California's Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge. The light birds are Ross' geese that I photographed near Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in central Oregon. In each case the flocks were vast--consisting of thousands of birds rising in unison. What a spectacular sight!

In making this composite, I particularly like the way the dark and light patterns of blackbirds and geese fit together against a background of earth and sky. It reminded me of M.C. Escher's work, in which he drew intricate patterns of, for example, groups of fish and birds trasforming one to another. My similar photographic concept cannot, of course, be as carefully executed, but it has an energy that the photos of each individual flock lacked. To me it has the feeling of molecules dancing in the universe--just on a vastly different scale.

Lee Rentz