Incredible Time-Stretching Photographs Capture Bird Migrations | National Geographic

[Music] I consider myself a birder now, but believe me, when I started this project, I was the farthest thing from a birder. My name is Steven Wilks. I'm a photographer and a fine artist. I've been taking pictures for most of my adult life. My first photographs were actually taken through a microscope when I was about 12 years old. I was very interested in science.

When I take pictures, that's my language, and if I can touch you with my language, if I can share something with you that will inspire you to say, "Wow! I've never seen anything like that. I had no idea that the world looked like this," then you begin to understand why we need to save this thing.

So, "Day to Night" came to me kind of in a unique way. I was asked by Life Magazine in 1996 to photograph the cast and crew of Baz Luhrmann's film, "Romeo and Juliet." At the time, David Hockney was doing these photo collages, and I was very inspired. I thought, "Wow, maybe I'll do a collage."

So I ended up taking 250 images of the entire cast and crew, and in the center of the photograph, I've got Claire Danes and Leonardo embracing. Then, as my camera panned to the right, I'm taking multiple images. I see this huge mirror on the set, and in the mirror is Claire Danes and Leonardo reflecting. For that one photograph, I asked them to kiss.

Then I came back to New York and spent two weeks putting this massive image together by hand. When I looked at it on my table, I was like, "Oh my god, this is crazy! I'm changing time in a photograph." That concept stayed with me for almost 16 years until technology now allows me to do it in a way that's seamless.

The first photograph I did, "Day to Night," was the High Line. I looked at the High Line, and I loved the fact that it was cool during lunchtime, but it was really kind of spooky at night. I remember having this conversation with a photo editor, saying, "You know, it would be really kind of cool if I could shoot north-to-south, day to night, in one picture."

She was like, "Are you kidding me? Is that even possible?" And I didn't know. I thought, "Well, we could try." That's really where "Day to Night" came about. Why does a still photograph only have to be a single moment? Why can't we take multiple moments, hundreds of moments, and layer them into one single image?

"Day to Night" started with me photographing New York City. It evolved from that into shooting the national parks, using people as a narrative. Then it went from the national parks to the Serengeti. That's the first time that I didn't have a human narrative, but I had a wildlife narrative in my picture.

[Music] But doing birds was a whole nother ballgame. If I'm shooting the Brooklyn Bridge, I take a highway and I'm there. When you go to a place like Bass Rock, you've got to fly to Edinburgh, Scotland, drive through a small town, take a boat with nine cases of equipment, hike up 122 steps—treacherous steps—and there's guano everywhere. You're slipping and sliding, you can't move very quickly.

You have to be very deliberate the way you walk to do these pictures. One of the greatest challenges is really getting an intimacy. Well, in order to do that, I have to become one of them. I am within a foot or two of their nests. That's a very, very challenging place to be because these species, in particular, the northern gannet, are very, very aggressive. They like to, you know, attack you if you get too close to their babies—understandable.

And so we had some funny moments. He died, a good man, killed on assignment while trying to film "Day to Night" of damage left on a Scottish island forever. In fact, it happened a funnel. We were in Steeple Jason. We had this incredible morning where I had this spectacular rainbow rise out of the ocean and literally arc into my frame. It's so insanely beautiful, and it's so surreal that I think my assistant, Chris, has a little video. He goes, "Just so people believe this actually happened. This is actually happening right now."

You're just like, "Oh my god." Each one of these pictures, there were moments I was seeing something that was so extraordinary. I was so overwhelmed that I couldn't even speak or function. It was that incredible.

It happened in Nebraska when all the sandhill cranes came in at sunset. I understand now why I'm a birder and why people do this and why they spend their lives, you know, following these species. Because it is one of the most extraordinary things I've ever witnessed.

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