What’s Up?
Me, early, as usual. It is Friday 18 December 2020. I will be heading to Fort DeSoto at about 6:15am. The forecast looks great: cloudy followed early by sunny skies with northeast winds from 10-13mph. And a rather chilly 43 degrees … It would probably be a good day not to get my feet wet, but I will 🙂
Remember, as always, that one of the best ways to improve as a nature photographer is to look at as many great images as possible.
Humbled
I am not sure how I got on the mailing list for NPOTY. Ahyhoo, when I got to my AirBNB in Gulfport, I clicked on the link and came to this:
Nature Photographer of the Year is a Nature Photography contest that celebrates the beauty of nature photography. We have some fantastic prizes for you to win including our top prize of € 3.000,- cash for the winner, plus other great cash prizes and cool photo equipment. When you enter our nature photo competition you will also support various nature conservations projects.
Thumbnails of the 2020 winners were laid out below the overall winner. Many of them looked intriguing so I began clicking on them one at a time. For the most part, I was blown away. I read the photographer’s comments and about the photographers for the better part of an hour. I was drained. I was impressed. For a while, I did not even feel like going out to photograph.
There is a fine line between being inspired and feeling as if the best move would be to throw all of your camera gear into the bay. Eventually, I headed down to DeSoto, inspired.
Click on this link to view the winning images. I will list my very favorites below. Feel free to leave a comment detailing your favorites.
My Favorites from the 2020 NPOTY Contest
These are listed in the order of appearance. If I absolutely loved the image the moment I saw it, it made my list. Many of the images that did not make my list are none-the-less amazing and inspirational.
Name of photographer | Image title/AWARD & CATEGORY
Andreas Geh | Brambling Togetherness/WINNER CATEGORY BIRDS
Rick Beldegreen | Lone egret among fall colors of the cypress swamp/HIGHLY COMMENDED CATEGORY BIRDS
Oscar Diez | Storm /HIGHLY COMMENDED CATEGORY BIRDS
Neelutpaul Barua | Heavenly Showers/HIGHLY COMMENDED CATEGORY MAMMALS
Thomas Vijayan |The World Is Going Upside Down/HIGHLY COMMENDED CATEGORY MAMMALS
Sergio Rivero Beneitez | Cocos Island/HIGHLY COMMENDED CATEGORY OTHER ANIMALS
Swapnil Deshpande | The earthern mattress/HIGHLY COMMENDED CATEGORY PLANTS AND FUNGI
Oliver Smart | A World Away/HIGHLY COMMENDED CATEGORY LANDSCAPES
Jie Fischer | Flyover/HIGHLY COMMENDED CATEGORY LANDSCAPES
Miloš Prelević | In The Hiding/WINNER CATEGORY UNDERWATER
Karim Iliya | Striped Hunter/RUNNER-UP CATEGORY UNDERWATER
Paul Goldstein | Big Blue/HIGHLY COMMENDED CATEGORY UNDERWATER
Andrea Pozzi | Trapped/WINNER CATEGORY NATURAL ART
Alessandro Carboni | When the wind blows/RUNNER-UP CATEGORY NATURAL ART
Alessandro Carboni | Sound and Vision/HIGHLY COMMENDED CATEGORY NATURAL ART
Franka Slothouber | Black walnut/RUNNER-UP CATEGORY BLACK & WHITE
Craig Parry | Contact with the Dwarf Minke/RUNNER-UP CATEGORY ANIMAL PORTRAITS
Manuel Enrique González Carmona | Big Small/HIGHLY COMMENDED CATEGORY ANIMAL PORTRAITS
Bart Siebelink | The apocalypse/WINNER CATEGORY ANIMALS OF “DE LAGE LANDEN”
Lili Sztrehárszki | Tiny details/WINNER CATEGORY YOUTH 10-17 YEARS
In addition, I found the following images from the Fred Hazelhoff Portfolio Award winner Alejandro Prieto (Border wall project) to be quite moving: Great Roadrunner and barbed wire, wild jaguar symbolically projected on to a section of the US-Mexico border wall, and photo 8 of ten in the slide show.
I am sorry that I had to list so many but this is one of the finest collections of natural history images that I have ever had the privilege to look at. And it gets worse: I clicked on the website links for many of the honored photographers and was equally blown away. The good news is that the links to the four previous editions of the contest do not work, at least not on my MacBook Pro.
Observations
There are many talented photographers from around the world. Many of the winning and honored men and women were from Europe. The longest lens that I noted that was used to create a winning or honored image was a 100-400. Many of the winning and honored images were made with fish-eye and wide angle lenses. Along with quite a few 70-200s. Very few of the winning and honored photographers used the latest and greatest gear. Many of the winning and honored images were made in bad weather or underwater. Almost all involved wonderful light and incredible creative vision. In seven of the twelve categories, I chose images other than the Category Winner …
And Inspired …
So I headed out at about 4pm and drove into the park. The first spot I visited did not look very promising with a collection of gulls and terns and shorebirds with wind against sun. I drove around chatting with BPN-friend Brian Sump about photography and about BPN. As the big clouds in the west took over, I headed to my one of my favorite sunset spots just outside the park. Things did not look too promising. When I got off the phone with Brian, I got out the Canon loaner gear, took a short walk, and found a cooperative Great Blue Heron. It was dark and windy. The bird pretty much stood in one spot for an hour.
Inspired by the NPOTY images to try and create something different, I began working at ridiculously slow shutter speeds, in part to try and blur the slowly moving water, and in part to test the Image Stabilization system on the RF 100-500 and the IBIS (in-body-image stabilization) system of the R5. I got down as slow as 1/8 second (handheld …) I was quite stunned by the results. I will share my best image from Thursday afternoon here with you tomorrow.
Typos
Feel free to e-mail or to leave a comment regarding any typos or errors. Just be right :). with love, artie
Thanks so much for the NPOTY link. Inspiring images.
Wow! What a lot of really creative images. George Lepp said years ago there were a lot of talented amateur photographers creating images. He was glad most were not submitting for publication and/or commissions. (This was pre-digital.)
Very interesting collection of images — far different than the ones I’ve seen in other photography contests.
A perfect photograph of a bird can be art, as you know, but these are so much more.
The winning photo “Jurassic…” was shot with a Nikkor 600mm f/4E.
Artie,
Thanks for the great link. Agree with many of your favorites, and Enchanted Forest under Plants and Fungi also jumped out for me. As for focal length, the more perfect the background, the more reason to include it, even using a long lens, as in Heavenly Showers, a 500mm image that feels like 24mm.
I have participated in this contest …unfortunately without success.
Your comment about the optics used, specially the lack of long lens among the winners, remind me of an article I read some years ago about the «fact» that, generally speaking, in european photo contests, wide angle lens pictures are often preferred over telephoto lens pictures. Which was then «explained» as a «cultural biais».
Interesting observation from your part.
Dear Artie
I am in awh by the photos and the “Time” and talent by so many their talent is so very inspiring and when i look at the photos i can place myself in the image and feel the love behind it, i think you know what i mean it is jaw dropping and i would say many if not all the photographers i would describe as….In The Eyes of an Angel
Artie your talent and inspiring ways and your vision are among these fine artists!
Much love from Wisconsin
Bob
Those are amazing photos! Thank You for the info.
YAW, Layton. Many are far beyond amazing 🙂
with love, a
ps: what were some of your faves?
Hi Artie,
Your point about equipment is worth echoing, one of the sharpest, most detailed images, Splash!!!, was taken with a Canon 7D and Tamron lens. BTW, the overall winner was taken with an D850 and 600/f4 Nikkor. But it ain’t about the equipment, it is the eyes and vision of the artist controlling the equipment. Sometimes I miss my Nikon F2 and Three primes (35, 105, 200). Life was so simple.
Thanks, Stacy. I agree. I figured that I might have missed a long lens or two.
with love, artie
Hi Artie,
I haven’t looked at the photos yet but what struck me about your list is I don’t recognize any of the names (not that I keep up on nature photographers). None of the “old” standard names like Morris, Wolf, Mangelson….
Is there a new group of stars? or is it just that you guys are not as aggressive with your contest submissions any more?
Mike
No clue. It always helps to enter. I will do so next year.
When you have an hour, do look at the images.
with love, artie