The common green magpie in flight by Prasan Shrestha (2024)

Catalogue identity and attribution

The work is catalogued as a digital photograph under the title 'The common green magpie in flight', attributed to Prasan Shrestha and dated 30 April 2024. It depicts the common green magpie, the species Cissa chinensis. The creator holds copyright and published the photograph under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license, a condition of reuse that attaches to the object as a digital file rather than to a physical support. The object therefore has two distinct dates in the record: the date of capture, 30 April 2024, and the later catalogue and publication date of 2024 for its Wikimedia Commons file record. The file record does not establish a production or edition history beyond that initial publication, and no medium other than digital photography is documented.(Prasan Shrestha, 2024, File information)

The record is held by Wikimedia Commons, and the file's official description supplies both the description, date, author and license and the technical metadata of capture. The file record is the primary documentation for the object; the annotation describes it as the official file record and notes its description, date, author, license and technical metadata. It is described as open access and partially consulted, so the archive account rests on the file record as it stands rather than on a fully examined original. No dimensions, inscriptions, accession identifiers or recorded title variants are established by the supplied evidence, and the entry should not be read as though those fields had been supplied.(Prasan Shrestha, 2024, File information)

Technical record of capture

The photograph was taken with a Sony ILCE-7RM4 camera and a 200-600mm lens at a focal length of 430mm, an exposure of 1/2500 second, an aperture of f/6.3 and ISO 1600. Those settings are integral to the object as evidence: a shutter speed of one twenty-five-hundredth of a second is what holds the bird in flight, while the focal length of 430mm and the relatively open aperture of f/6.3 situate the subject at a distance and isolate it against its surroundings. A faster shutter speed normally reduces the light reaching the sensor, and ISO 1600 is the compensation that keeps the exposure workable. The technical record therefore documents the conditions of capture, not merely camera equipment, and it explains why the bird appears as a readable shape rather than a green blur.(Prasan Shrestha, 2024, File information)

Because the object is a photograph rather than a painting or sculpture, its material identity lies in its digital file and the capture parameters recorded with it. The evidence establishes the camera body, the lens range and the exact exposure triangle, but it does not establish a physical print, a negative or a pigment, and those should not be inferred. The combination of a 200-600mm zoom at 430mm with 1/2500 second and ISO 1600 is a configuration adapted to fast, distant wildlife subjects, which is consistent with the catalogued content and with the file's function as a record of a bird of Asian forests. The technical metadata thus serves simultaneously as provenance of method and as a qualification on what the image can be claimed to show.(Prasan Shrestha, 2024, File information)

Publication and circulation

The file was published through Wikimedia Commons, an open-access platform, under a license that permits reuse with attribution and share-alike conditions. That publication context matters for how the object circulates and is cited: the license and the author's name travel with the file as part of its identity, and the Commons file record is the source of the title, attribution, date and technical metadata used here. The evidence does not document an exhibition history, a commissioning body or an earlier provenance interval, and the account should not supply them. The photograph's significance in this archive is consequently bound up with its status as a documented, openly licensed digital record of a named species and a named photographer on a specific date.(Prasan Shrestha, 2024, File information)

The object is a digital photograph titled 'The common green magpie in flight', taken by Prasan Shrestha on 30 April 2024.(Prasan Shrestha, 2024)

The Subject and Its Identification

Visual observation

The photograph titled "The common green magpie in flight" depicts the common green magpie, Cissa chinensis, in flight. The identification of the species is given in the file's captions rather than resting on the viewer's own recognition, so the account of what the picture shows is anchored to the record's stated subject: a single bird of a named species, airborne, occupying the role of both subject and action. The picture was made by Prasan Shrestha and dated 30 April 2024, and the creator holds the copyright, releasing the work under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. These are the documented circumstances of the image as published; the depiction of the species and its flight is established by the caption record rather than inferred from plumage alone.(Prasan Shrestha, 2024, Captions)

Interpretation

The visible configuration of the bird is what the framing concentrates on: wings spread, the body suspended in the air, and the bill open as though the bird were calling. The distribution of the wings is asymmetrical, one raised so that its orange-rufous underside is exposed and the other lowered, while emerald-green plumage carries across the body. Because the bird fills much of the frame, the picture reads as a study of a single posture rather than a scene with habitat or context around it. The open bill is the one gesture in the frame that implies sound, although no audio accompanies the image; it functions visually as a sign of vocalization without documenting that any call was actually made.(Prasan Shrestha, 2024, Captions)

Visual observation

The photograph depicts the common green magpie (Cissa chinensis) in flight.(Prasan Shrestha, 2024)

Capture parameters

Technical examination

The technical record for this photograph is unusually compact, but it establishes the conditions under which the image was made. According to the file metadata, the photograph was taken with a Sony ILCE-7RM4 camera and a 200-600mm lens, set at 430mm focal length, with an exposure of 1/2500 second, an aperture of f/6.3, and ISO 1600. These are the stated capture parameters rather than deductions from the image, and they belong to the same official file record that identifies the picture as a digital photograph titled "The common green magpie in flight," made by Prasan Shrestha on 30 April 2024, and published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license with the creator retaining copyright. The settings describe a long focal length combined with a very brief exposure and a moderately high sensitivity: the lens narrows the field of view onto a distant subject, the shutter speed limits how far a moving bird can travel during the exposure, and the ISO value compensates for the light that the fast shutter does not admit. Together they are the technical basis for the readable in-flight form, though the metadata alone does not prove how sharp any particular feather edge is.(Prasan Shrestha, 2024, Metadata)

Visual observation

The technical parameters gain meaning against what the image depicts. The photograph shows the common green magpie (Cissa chinensis) in flight, and it is that flight, not a perched or specimen pose, that the camera settings were arranged to hold. A 430mm focal length on a 200-600mm zoom means the bird was framed from a distance while still filling a substantial part of the picture, and 1/2500 second at f/6.3 with ISO 1600 is a combination suited to stopping wing motion in available light. The file record does not report the lighting conditions, the distance to the bird, or whether the frame was cropped, so the precise relationship between the stated settings and the final composition remains an inference from the image rather than a documented measurement. What the evidence does establish is a dated, attributed digital photograph of a named species in active flight, with the exposure variables recorded as part of the file's own metadata.(Prasan Shrestha, 2024, Captions; Metadata)

Evidence and limits

Interpretation

Reading these units together, and distinguishing what is documented from what is proposed, matters for how the object should be used. The metadata is a record of equipment and exposure; the caption is a record of subject and species; neither is an independent technical examination of the image file, and no sampling, imaging, or comparative analysis of the photograph is reported in the supplied record. The identification of the bird as Cissa chinensis and the description of it in flight come from the file's own captions, so they are attributed to the source rather than confirmed here by ornithological examination. In the same way, the claim that high ISO compensates for the fast shutter and keeps the exposure workable is a reasonable reading of the stated numbers, not something the file record itself asserts. The limits of the technical interpretation are therefore the limits of the file metadata: it tells us the camera, lens, focal length, exposure, aperture, and sensitivity, and it tells us what the picture is said to show, but it does not report file format details, post-processing, resolution, or any examination of the sensor data. Within a larger history of photographic practice, the value of this record is that it preserves those capture decisions alongside the image and its license, so the photograph can be studied as a dated, openly licensed act of wildlife photography rather than as an unattributed picture of a bird.(Prasan Shrestha, 2024, Captions; Metadata)

Technical examination

The photograph was taken with a Sony ILCE-7RM4 camera and a 200-600mm lens at 430mm focal length, 1/2500 second exposure, f/6.3, ISO 1600.(Prasan Shrestha, 2024)

The file record

The photograph is documented on Wikimedia Commons as a digital photograph titled The common green magpie in flight, taken by Prasan Shrestha on 30 April 2024 and depicting the common green magpie, Cissa chinensis, in flight. The official file record is the source for the description, date, author and licensing information, and its stated relevance is the artwork itself; the record was only partially consulted, so details beyond the claims it supports should not be treated as established. Within the collection and display section, this record is the primary document of the work's authorship, subject and date.(Prasan Shrestha, 2024, Licensing)

Regarding rights and reuse, the record states that the creator holds the copyright and published the photograph under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. That dual statement matters for how the image circulates in a collection context: the creator is identified as the rights holder, while the chosen license permits sharing and adaptation under attribution and share-alike terms. The licensing information is listed in the source's licensing section, and it is the only rights statement supplied by the evidence, so no further permissions, restrictions or transfers of rights can be assumed from this record.(Prasan Shrestha, 2024, Licensing)

The creator holds the copyright and published the photograph under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.(Prasan Shrestha, 2024)

Recorded values

Interpretation

The recorded valuation material for this object comes from a single working document: a model-generated insurance estimate with a range of US$1,500 to US$5,000, generated on 16 October 2026 for manual review. The methodology states that the range is a broad, conservative band built solely from the confirmed context of a born-digital wildlife photograph by Prasan Shrestha dated 30 April 2024, sized 5887 by 3679 pixels and uploaded to Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. The document is explicit that the work is a self-published digital photograph rather than a unique physical object, painting, or print, and that it has no documented sale price, auction history, gallery representation, or private collection provenance in the supplied excerpts. The range is therefore described as a low-end model estimate for an insurance schedule entry covering a digital file and any associated reproduction materials. Because the artist has no documented market record in the excerpts, the model used a conservative reference band for contemporary digital wildlife photography rather than a specific comparable sale, and no known comparable sales or private insurance records were accessed. The document carries its own qualification: it is not an official insurance value, appraisal, auction result, or sale price, does not reflect a professional valuation, should not be used for binding insurance, acquisition, or financial decisions, and notes that the free Wikimedia Commons license itself limits market valuation, with the advice to confirm details and consult a qualified appraiser before relying on any figure.(Prasan Shrestha, 2024)

Working estimate

Calculated working insurance estimate, not a sale price: Estimated insurance range: US$1,500 to US$5,000 Recorded date: Working calculation, generated 2026-10-16. Methodology: This is a broad, conservative working range based solely on the confirmed context for a born-digital wildlife photograph by Prasan Shrestha dated 30 April 2024, sized 5887 by 3679 pixels and uploaded to Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. The work is a self-published digital photograph, not a unique physical object, painting, or print. It has no documented sale price, auction history, gallery representation, or private collection provenance in the supplied excerpts. The range reflects a low-end model estimate for an insurance schedule entry covering a digital file and any associated reproduction materials. Because the artist has no documented market record in the excerpts, the model uses a conservative reference band for contemporary digital wildlife photography rather than a specific comparable sale. No known comparable sales or private insurance records were accessed. Qualification: This is a model-generated working range for manual review only. It is not an official insurance value, appraisal, auction result, or sale price. It does not reflect a professional valuation and should not be used for binding insurance, acquisition, or financial decisions. The artwork is a freely licensed digital photograph from Wikimedia Commons, which limits market valuation. Confirm all details and consult a qualified appraiser before relying on any figure.(Prasan Shrestha, 2024)