Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2016 Media Preview
It’s still dark outside but my excitement to see the winning images before the public has spurred me to get out of bed, even if it is 5:30 in the morning ! Luckily the trains are running smoothly, a blessing on such an eventful day. I am on my way meet talented photographer and friend Karolina Tornqvist. Karolina is a brilliantly talented photographer, she has spent time volunteering at orang-utan orphanages and has also worked closer to home with Red Foxes in rehabilitation. Arriving in Victoria it’s safe to say the first priority was coffee. Fuelled and ready to go we made the short journey to South Kensington. This is the fifth year that I have been to the awards and the feeling of excitement builds year on year. It also just so happens that the Young Wildlife Photographer of the year is a good friend of mine, Gideon Knight.
Red Deer and Red Kites !
It’s 5am and the alarm has just gone off, all of us are pretty tired from the previous evening. We have got up early in order to get down to one of London’s royal parks, Bushy Park. Coffee’s drunk and kit packed we set off in the darkness of an early autumnal morning in search of roaring stags. When we arrived at the park it was still pretty dark but we were encouraged by the roars in the distance. We got all set up and headed out into the park to find our first stag. We didn’t have to travel far from the car park before we had our eyes on him; he was huge and had a roar to scare any unwitting passerby. We spent quite some time with this particular stag and I managed to shoot quite a bit of film whilst he roared straight into the camera.
Wildlife Weekend
This blog has been sitting dormant for quite a while but now I will hopefully update you guys more often. I thought what better way to kick-start this blog then with a recent weekend spent with two talented photographers, Harry Read and Kyle Moore. I have known both of them for ages and it was time for a heavily due catch up so I invited them to stay with me for a weekend and head out for a wildlife-filled weekend. It started by me meeting the boys in London for a bit of urban fox photography. As soon as we got out of the car we had spotted one patrolling the area. We got our gear together and then we proceeded to slowly get closer until she became accustomed to our presence. It is always a pleasure to work with Britain’s most common mammal, working with them for over three
Winter’s Morning
The weather had been forecast for heavy frost for this morning but that wasn’t the case when me and my Dad travelled to the Surrey Hills. It’s 6am and I’ve just got ready to go out with my Dad to hopefully shoot some frosty scenes in the Surrey hills. At this time in the morning it was still pretty dark so I couldn’t see much beyond the car headlights as we made our way along the drove roads in the hills. We then parked up and started to make our way to the top of the hill. It was a bit of a slog going up but when I reached the top we were both treated to a beautiful sunrise, the sun was a neat orange circle accompanied by a few wandering clouds. After taking my time photographing the sunrise I joined my Dad down in the woodlands where the
Exploring London
One of my all time favourite places to photograph has got to be London! It’s so diverse and being only a 30 minute train journey from where I live it seems crazy not to go in search of some interesting angles. Recently me and my Dad took a trip to St James’ park in London. The weather was pretty miserable, a trend in these past couple of weeks, but I was keen to get out and use my GoPro that I got given for my birthday. I have used it before briefly but this was a really good opportunity to see what it could do. This added with the fact that most squirrels will come straight to the hand, looking for food, made me want to start shooting some low angles at the squirrel’s eye level. When we got to the park it was fairly busy for a rainy day
Rainy Day Photography
The weather in the UK has been pretty awful recently but despite the heavy showers I planned a shoot at a new location in Surrey. The plan really was just to do a recce of the area and get a better sense of what images I could create during the course of this year. I will hopefully be doing a long term project of the area and as this will be my second full time project I wanted to get as much firsthand knowledge of the area as I could. It started off with my Dad dropping me off close to one of the local ponds where there is often an abundance of bird life. Unfortunately as there was quite a heavy shower, most of the birds had either moved further into the middle of the pond or had come out to feed. The main species were Canadian geese and
Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2015
Every year the annual Wildlife Photographer of the Year graces us with the world’s most stunning imagery, and this year was no different! The odds are ever stacked against photographers with the competition’s standard reaching ever higher highs with the Young winners really showing their worth. What strikes me about the competition is that the young winners don’t only win an award but they get to meet other young people who have the burning passion for the outdoors. Often wildlife photography can be a solitary affair but here at the awards stories are told. By sharing these stories the wildlife of today will have a future tomorrow. A truly harrowing situation lies in the illegal ivory trade of South Africa. Central Africa has lost 64 percent of its elephants in the last decade. But there is hope, photographer Brent Stirton has spent many years working with local Rangers and park
Urban Foxes Continued…
So we are well into the new year and Spring is fast approaching. Recently I have been working on the second part of my fox project, working with the foxes at night. As you can imagine this has been a lot harder and has bought it’s own difficulties but the rewards are hugely satisfying. As you know I have been working with my foxes on and off since April last year and has been a great experience for me seen as it has been my first project which I have invested a lot of time into. The second part as I have said is photographing them at night, now to do this I have been working with camera trap. These are small units in which an infrared beam is broken by subject and sets off the camera, I have had varying degrees of success with them and have now got
Wildlife Photographer of the year 2014
I am pleased to announce that I was awarded the Finalist award in this years Wildlife Photographer of the year. It was a real surprise and I was over the moon when I got the email to say that I was through to the awards. I am extremely grateful to say that this is the second year that I have had an award in the competition and it was a real pleasure to catch up with everyone that I had met at the previous award ceremony. The competition hosted a wealth of incredibly evocative images which told a variety of stories. Next I had a week full of exiting experiences including a media preview and a young wildlife photography academy for which I am extremely thankful to Rosie and the rest of the Wildlife Photographer of the year team for putting on. In the years that I have been at the awards I have to