Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2014

[meland]

Some great stuff here - even if it is a bit lacking in commentary about DR, equivalence, etc.



http://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit-us/wpy/?...ite-redirects&utm_campaign=shortcut-wildphoto

 

[CreeDo]

Man I LOVE that 2014 winner. Captured in infrared... I had this idea that IR made for unrealistic funky black and whites, like trees with bright white leaves and such. I had no idea it could be used to make this very natural, perfectly exposed black'n'white.

I like that the gear was actually fairly routine... a good old 5dmkIII and canon zoom lens. Not cheap, but nothing exotic. The hard work came from the guy spending 6 months with this group of lions until they were willing to tolerate him standing close enough to photograph at 32(!)mm. What is this, like 20 feet away?

 

[merops]

Man I LOVE that 2014 winner ...

I'm glad someone does I was really disappointed in this as a wildlife photo: it was pretty much the one that I liked the least of all the finalists.

... The hard work came from the guy spending 6 months with this group of lions until they were willing to tolerate him standing close enough to photograph at 32(!)mm. What is this, like 20 feet away?

I'm surprised if it really took 6 months to habituate a pride of lions (especially in Serengeti). The blurb I've seen says that he was standing up in his vehicle shooting out of a 'hole cut specially in the roof' (which would be a good description of a standard safari vehicle).

I'm posting because I'm just really interested to know whether anyone else feels that it wasn't (for them) the best of the bunch.

 

[CreeDo]

Ha! well, I did like the others, but what struck me about the lions is we usually see them on these hot, dusty plains, maybe up in a tree or feeding at some oasis. But here they're on a cliff and the background strongly reminds me of the ocean. I guess because of the IR capture, the distant ground is pretty flat looking, with almost wave-like details and an unbroken horizon.

Between that and the tiny birds and the sunrays blasting through the clouds, and distant sheets of rain, it's almost like he somehow captured lions on seaside cliffs. If he'd shot in color it would ruin the effect with the distant plains being probably brown and yellow. But in B/W my brain is free to make that subconscious (well, now conscious) association.

I did also like the ghost pelicans and the incongruity of cheery parakeets flying over a graveyard. I'm a bit blown away by the 8 year old kid's shot of a scorpion.

 

[merops]

Thanks for not posting back and saying what an old grouch I am

I especially like the stuff where there's something beautiful, or interesting behaviour. Here's a few of the ones I especially liked:

Creative dining

The enchanted woodland (thought this was sooo beautiful)

Pauraque study

Night of the deadly lights

Skating on sunlight

Dolphin downtime

Jelly fireworks

Murmuration in the storm

Dusk transition

 

[CreeDo]

oh it's cool... if we all agreed they wouldn't even have the photo contest and judges. They'd just inform everyone "here's the best shot that was taken this year. Have a good day."

I liked enchanted woodland a lot too, I was a little surprised to read they accepted a composite image. I guess if they're just seconds apart, fair enough, it's more or less like an HDR with ghosting being fixed by using one of the brackets.

But it doesn't sound far off from combining your most interesting variation of the subject, onto your favorite version of a background. Would that be cheating a little?

 

[merops]

Yes, I couldn't decide what exactly he'd done. The organisers seem to have loosened up the rules a bit over the last couple of years. There was an interesting photo in last year's exhibition that was a composite of 126 photos . I don't think it works very well on a small display, but apparently it was stunning in the original. The organisers still seem to be pretty strict about some things - like not editing objects out of photos. One of the blog articles on the competition's website is about the judging process: once they are down to the list of photos that the whole jury will consider together, they take a day off, and one poor soul has to check all the competition images against their original raw files to check that they meet their rules about the extent of image manipulation.

 

[Erick L]

There was an interesting photo in last year's exhibition that was a composite of 126 photos .

More on this photo:

The contest has new categories like HDR and composites.

 

[merops]

Thanks for posting the video. I just realised that this is the same guy who won this year's competition with the lion photo

 

[CreeDo]

I think probably panoramic stitching, or focus stacking is clearly OK, just to overcome the limits of the camera lens or megapixel count or whatever.

When you start using photoshop masking, wand, lasso tool, to place a specific object in a specific photo, I start to wonder if it's a little too close to creating a moment from thin air rather than capturing a moment.

Still, I can't deny the jungle cat pic is beautiful (as is the giant tree) and both deserve recognition.