TITLE: Wings Over Concrete

Wings Over Concrete is a long-term photography project that explores how birds move and live within urban environments. The project looks at cities not as places where nature disappears, but as spaces where birds adapt and continue their daily rhythms alongside human structures.

The focus of the project is movement. Instead of capturing a single frozen moment, the images trace the flight paths of birds as they travel through the city. Multiple frames are combined into one photograph, allowing short moments of flight to form visible patterns in the sky. These patterns reveal repetition, flow, and direction, turning ordinary movement into something we can clearly observe.

Buildings, wires, towers, and open skies become part of the visual language. The birds are not isolated from their surroundings; their movement is shaped by the city itself. In this way, the urban environment is not treated as a background, but as an active element that influences how birds fly, turn, and navigate space.

The project reflects on coexistence. Birds do not resist the city, they learn it. They adjust their paths, timings, and behaviors to fit within human-made spaces. Wings Over Concrete highlights this quiet adaptation and shows how nature and urban life exist together in subtle and often unnoticed ways.

By slowing down movement and making it visible, the project invites viewers to look more closely at everyday environments. What usually passes unnoticed above streets and buildings becomes a moment of reflection, reminding us that life continues to move, adapt, and find balance even in the most built environments.

AUTHOR: Raghuvamsh Chavali (Canada)

Raghuvamsh Chavali is a Canadian photographer of Indian origin whose work spans nature, wildlife, conceptual photography, astrophotography, and visual storytelling. With more than a decade of photographic practice, he has developed a distinctive style that combines artistic vision with careful observation of the natural world. His photographs often explore the relationship between nature and human-made environments, revealing moments that are easily overlooked in everyday life. Whether documenting birds in flight, the night sky, or urban landscapes, his work aims to encourage viewers to pause, observe, and see familiar subjects from a fresh perspective. Chavali is best known for his award-winning long-term project, Wings Over Concrete, an ongoing photographic series that examines how birds adapt and move through modern cities. Rather than capturing a single decisive moment, the project layers multiple moments of flight into a single frame, revealing patterns and movements that are invisible to the naked eye. The series has received international acclaim for its originality and has become one of his signature bodies of work.

His photography has earned recognition in some of the world's leading photography competitions. He was the Project Series Winner of the 10th Annual 35AWARDS (2025) for Wings Over Concrete, selected from hundreds of thousands of submissions by photographers representing more than 170 countries. He is also a Grand Winner and Gold Medal recipient at the Paris International Street Photo Awards, a Winner of the People's Choice Award at Australia's Head On Photo Festival, a Gold Winner at the New York Photography Awards, and a 1st Place winner at the ND Awards. His work has also been recognised by the WPE International Photography Awards, Nature inFocus Photography Awards, Belfast Photo Festival, HIPA, Fine Art Photography Awards (FAPA), and numerous other international competitions.

In 2025, Chavali received Gold, Silver, and People's Choice awards at the Exposure One Awards for his projects Strings of Contrasts and Symphony of the Starling Birds, further establishing his reputation for creating visually distinctive conceptual work. Earlier in his career, he won the Nature Canada Photography Contest in 2021, leading to his photograph being featured on the cover of the Nature Canada Birds Calendar.
Beyond competitions, Chavali's work has been widely published by international media. His photographs and stories have appeared in The Guardian, Smithsonian Magazine, Canadian Geographic, PetaPixel, BBC Sky at Night, Space.com, National Post, CBC, Deccan Chronicle, The New Indian Express, WOW! Hyderabad Magazine, Telangana Today, and many other publications. His 2023 photograph of the rare Stable Auroral Red (SAR) arc over Ontario received international attention and was featured by several science and photography publications, highlighting both the scientific significance and artistic value of the image.

In addition to his photographic practice, Chavali has contributed articles on photographic techniques and visual storytelling for international publications and serves as an ambassador for 1x.com, one of the world's most highly curated fine art photography platforms. His work has also been exhibited internationally, including at the Toronto Outdoor Art Fair, Head On Photo Festival in Australia, and Trieste Photo Days in Italy.