John Welch | Art Photography
“FLIGHT PRINTS”

I’ve been excited about photography and nature since I attended high school in Santa Clara in the 1980’s. I moved to Santa Cruz in 1982 to study physics at UCSC, and I had some great photo-adventures shooting birds, stars and planets, elephant seals at Año Nuevo Island, post-revolution Nicaragua, etc.

In Santa Cruz, good friends introduced me to birding and computer programming, which have been passions of mine ever since. In this project of photographing bird ‘trails’, which I call Flight Prints, I get to combine my interests in photography, birding, programming, and art. The idea started when I came across the work of the Catalonian photographer Xavi Bou and was inspired to create my own version of bird flight photography.

There are several enjoyable aspects to this work: Going outside and looking at birds, of course, trying to imagine what their ‘drawings’ will look like, and then getting surprised when I see them emerge on the computer, as if seeing film developing in the darkroom. I love getting to ‘collaborate’ with the birds, by selecting the ‘start’ and ‘stop’ points of their ‘drawings’ in order to making pleasing pictures. I also love working on the computer program I wrote in Python that helps me visualize the images as I compose them.

I’m looking forward to continuing to explore what I can do with this technique, as well as continuing to take ‘normal’ wildlife photos as well. I hope you enjoy these images as much as I do.

email: jj@johnw.org
website: www.photography.johnw.org
IG: @flight_print_photos
FB: John Welch Art Photography

ALSO at the wine bar– This month we feature a pop up exhibition of John’s students work from Mt. Madonna school. John is an innovative teacher, and we look forward to seeing what comes out of his classroom!!