Photographs by Xavi Bou

When searching for inspiration, Catalan photographer Xavi Bou looks to the sky. In his Ornithographies series, Bou transforms the chronophotography technique, a series of still images taken sequentially, to illuminate the splendor of birds in flight. “I like to think of myself as a curator, looking for these choreographies,” he says. With his lens focused on his winged muses—often birds like starlings, ravens, or swifts (his favorite)—Bou takes hundreds of digital photographs, then merges them together to depict flight patterns that our eyes alone cannot perceive. “I hope that my project will help make us aware of what we have,” he says. “To conserve, we must love; to love, we must first know.”