The world at dawn is a place of mystery, a realm suspended between night and day, between the seen and the unseen. In my serie, Between Reality and Illusion, I sought to capture this delicate liminality through the silhouettes of animals emerging from the dense mist of an early morning. The thick fog softened the edges of reality, dissolving the landscape into an ethereal dreamscape where form and movement became mere suggestions, ghostly apparitions in an ocean of silver haze. There was no sharp sunrise to pierce the veil that morning, only a muted, diffused glow that barely hinted at the hidden moon and sun. The air was heavy with moisture, muffling sounds and enveloping the world in a hushed stillness. It was in this silence that the birds took flight, their wings carving fleeting paths through the mist, their forms shifting between presence and absence, as if they belonged to both this world and another.

Each photograph in the series plays with the boundary between clarity and obscurity. Some images capture the faint outlines of perching birds, barely discernible against the softened branches of unseen trees. Others depict them mid-flight, their dark shapes momentarily breaking through the fog, only to dissolve again into nothingness. There is an ambiguity to their movements—are they real, or are they mere illusions conjured by the mind in the absence of detail? In creating this series, I was drawn to the way mist transforms the familiar into something almost supernatural. The birds, often symbols of freedom and clarity, became shadowy figures of uncertainty, navigating a world where nothing was solid or defined. The absence of a visible sun heightened this feeling, eliminating the usual markers of time and direction, leaving only movement and suggestion.

Between Reality and Illusion is both a visual exploration of nature and an invitation to experience the inbetween spaces those fleeting moments where perception wavers, and the mind fills in what the eyes cannot see. It is about embracing the unknown, the beauty of ambiguity, and the poetry found in the quiet whisper of wings disappearing into mist.

Somwhere, Dolnoslaskie, Poland