Slovenian Photographer Zooms Out to Win Nature Pic Award

It takes patience, luck, and a lot of skill to capture memorable images of wildlife, where subjects tend to be in constant motion. Photographer Maruša Puhek of Slovenia has all three attributes, but her prizewinning shot of a pair of deer galloping across a snow-covered orchard was the result of a happy accident: she didn’t have a zoom lens with her for the money shot.

“I took a few shots, frustrated that I didn’t have a telephoto lens with me,” she says on the World Nature Photography Awards website. “Only later, while editing, did I realise how lucky I was; the scene wasn’t overly zoomed in, allowing the snowy surroundings to remain an essential part of the composition.”

Plenty of other entrants in the photo contest did zoom in to capture their images. Tom Nickels of Finland watched three polar bears feeding on a “several dolphin carcasses,” which would have been a bit gorey for sensitive eyes, but when one of the bears broke off to play with a stick – very doglike behavior – he was ready with a lens big enough to get us up close to the action.

Some of the winning shots are pure art. Clive Burns of the UK has been photographing red knots and other coastal wading birds for years. Last year he was positioned just right to capture a dense mass of the birds in flight that looks very much an M.C. Escher print.

In the Plants and Fungi category, Brazilian Marcio Esteves Cabral was on hand when a sunrise lit up a field of paepalanthus flowers in Brazil’s Cerrado biome, which is at risk of deforestation. Apropos, since the contest organizers are all about conservation and so they – partnering with the green group Ecologi – plant a tree for every one of the thousands of entries it receives.
There are many more entries, by winners and runners-up, that are worth a look at the award’s website. Prints are available for purchase for $33 a pic.