Dennis Hlynsky’s Vimeo channel reveals something our eyes ordinarily miss: the paths animals draw through the air.

Using a technique he calls extended moment photography, Hlynsky films birds, insects and other creatures moving in real time. He then layers successive frames so that each animal leaves a trail behind it. A starling becomes a charcoal line. A flock turns into a shifting mesh of loops, arcs and sudden decisions.

The effect is beautiful, but these films are more than visual trickery. They show how an individual moves within a group: following, breaking away, hesitating and returning. Patterns appear where, to the unaided eye, there was only a burst of wings.

Hlynsky has spent decades exploring the meeting point between art and digital technology. Here, the technology does something. It slows our looking down and lets us witness the hidden handwriting of living creatures as they move together through the world.