WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR AWARDS IN A PANDEMIC?

THE SHOW MUST GO ON!

Representing wildlife photography at the first socially distanced Wildlife Photographer of the Year Awards

Let’s not beat around the bush - 2020 has been the weirdest year most of us can remember. With all of the restrictions around social distancing, it was also one of the strangest years for the NHM Wildlife Photographer of the Year Awards in its half-century history. Typically, there’s a big ceremony held at the Hintze Hall (the main entrance atrium where Hope and Dippy have welcomed 5 million annual visitors) in the Natural History Museum, where all of the winners, judges and special guests get dressed up for dinner with the dinosaurs and amazing stories are shared, speeches are made and awards are handed out. But this year of course, that wasn’t possible…

HOWEVER! The Natural History Museum and the team at Wildlife Photographer of the Year made certain that despite the pandemic, we would celebrate wildlife photography and the show would go on. Chris Packham and Megan McCubbin were invited to host the first ever live-streamed and socially distanced ceremony and the winners were invited to accept their awards online in real-time, so that we could all get a glimpse inside the awards from the comfort of our homes.

Having been awarded in the competition twice previously, I was invited to attend and be on hand to answer any questions from the public. It was a little strange to be the only photographer physically there, but it was really great to see the event come together and all of the hard work the organisers put in to make it work despite the pandemic! You can watch the main event via the link below, but the stream of the intro and all of the behind-the-scenes extras etc. is unfortunately only available via a private link.

The 2020 overall winner was this amazing image displayed below by Sergey Gorshkov. I don’t want to get into the technicalities of why this was such a difficult image to capture, but trust me - IT WAS! But… I do want to say that this winning image is representative of the sea-change that we are experiencing as human beings. There is a wild part of us inside that resents losing our connection with nature and will do everything we can to cling to it. This pandemic has made us all realise how important nature is for our physical and mental health and for me, this image is about embracing and remembering that. Roll on WPY 2021!

WWF COMMISSION

WARNING: This post contains some sensitive images and material

This summer I was commissioned by WWF to capture a series of images that document the current threats to wildlife in the UK to illustrate that the UK is one of the most nature depleted countries in the world. It was a major undertaking to travel the country and find the stories, not to mention coming face-to-face with the reality of the situation, but we managed it and you can see the final project on the WWF site here, and as a Guardian Gallery here. The above image of a mallard duck and mute swan lying dead amongst litter, after poisoning by algal blooms was used as the lead in both pieces.

I started off down in Cornwall, photographing plastic pollution with Rame Peninsula Beach Care, photographing their collections of plastic pollution that have washed up on their local beach at Tregantle. The beach actually looked pretty pristine, but getting down on hands and knees and sifting through the sand, the picture quickly changes. In amongst the sand, there are plastic nurdles and bio-beads, used as a raw material in plastic production and in the treatment of sewage. In just seven visits to a 100m stretch of Tregantle, Rame PBC collected 9 million of them!

I photographed the plight of pollinators due to habitat loss, hedgehog rescues at Secret World Wildlife Rescue, polluted rivers in Liverpool, seals with plastic “necklaces”, Fly-tipped motorbikes in the River Wandle, air traffic at the London Wetlands Centre and the burning of fossil fuels at a coal-fired power station.

I was also in touch with Project Splatter in the hope of documenting some road-kill to illustrate how roads fragment wildlife habitat and road traffic is a major cause of air pollution and wildlife casualties and fatalities. The plan was that they would contact me with their roadkill reports and if I was in the area, I would go and document the scene. It wasn’t necessary as unfortunately I found my own wildlife fatality, and was first on the scene to discover this dead badger. I had driven in to a campsite and seen the badger alive near the entrance the previous evening and had excitedly phoned my wife to tell her about the encounter. The next morning on the way out, I came across this upsetting scene, just metres from where I had seen it alive. After publication of this image, I was asked if the blood was fake. It wasn’t and was still dripping and clotting. Project Splatter reports that out of all of the people that have seen wild badgers in the UK, 90% of them have been dead on the roadside.

WWF used this set of images to call for a global deal for nature that protects and restores. They also used my image of a gannet struggling in plastic pollution for their Call4Nature series: “The striking set of images have been taken by some of the world’s top wildlife photographers. The photographs, which illustrate some of nature’s biggest challenges, demonstrate visually why the Call4Nature is so important.” I don’t enjoy photographing this type of negative conservation imagery, but sometimes it’s necessary to document these stories to make sure they get told and heard. The positive to be taken from these images is that there are organisations like WWF and all of the smaller charities and organisations I worked with on this set who are fighting for our wildlife. We just have to make sure to take responsibility ourselves and do everything we can to help them.

AUDUBON / NIKON / SONY COMMISSIONS

I’ve recently had the opportunity to work on some great stories with some pretty well-known organisations, including the National Audubon Society, Sony and Nikon. I have previously worked with Audubon on a magazine feature about gannet conservation, which you can see here: Gannet Rescue Mission. This time, Audubon were working on a feature about the social habits of the birds at the Wytham Tit Project, which they describe as “the world’s longest running continuous study of individual avian lives. Its database now tops 34 million records from 10,000 individual birds. Never before have researchers had such granular information about the social lives of so many generations of wild animals on such a large scale.” They gave me an assignment to document the study, which you can read about here: The Surprising Connection Between Birds, Facebook, and Other Social Networks.

Over the past few months I’ve also been working with Nikon, who commissioned me to test out and review their full-frame f1.4 28mm lens. It’s an expensive lens, but great if you shoot a lot in low light and need the extra speed. One of my favourite images I shot for the project was this Alpine Chough below.

I was also recently commissioned by Sony, who were working with the EOCA (European Outdoor Conservation Association) to highlight species on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. It’s great that major brands like Sony are working with conservation organisations on projects like this, so it was great to be a part of it. I went and shot three species, including Atlantic puffins, wolverines and the common pochard. The puffins were the most fun as I got to go out to Skomer and to work with the team at Falcon Boats to photograph the puffins on the water. Sony gave me the RX10 III to shoot with, which has an insane 24-600mm equivalent lens, that was perfect for shooting the distance and close-up stuff without having to change lenses 😃.

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC COMMISSION - BIG CAT WEEK

I was recently commissioned by National Geographic to shoot a rather unusual model after dark on the streets of London...

To launch BIG CAT WEEK in the UK, Nat Geo WILD had a fully animatronic leopard built by John Nolan Studio and I had one night to photograph it in iconic London locations. The idea was inspired by Nat Geo Wild TV episode Mission Critical: Leopards at the Door. Wild leopards roam the streets of Mumbai but the people who live in the city and the leopards have found a way to coexist. There are of course occasional conflicts, but Mumbai is a great example of how people and wildlife can share urban areas - even if that wildlife is a big cat or other top predator. Read the full story here: Learning to Live with Leopards.

As it was such a complicated build, the leopard wasn't fully finished and operational until the night before the press release, so we had to work through the night to create a set of publicity images ready to go to press in the morning. Assisted by the talented Josh Perrett, we spent the night driving "Lily" all over the city, from Brick Lane, to the Gherkin and Tower Bridge. We got some pretty funny looks and had a great time watching people's reactions to seeing a life-size and incredibly realistic leopard on the streets of London. The story was picked up by a few major news outlets and with the accompanying tv programmes will hopefully help to raise awareness of the threats facing leopards and other big cats in the wild.

INTERVIEW: BBC Radio 2 - The Radio 2 Arts Show with Jonathan Ross

As mentioned in my previous post, I was recently interviewed by Jonathan Ross on BBC Radio 2 - the most popular national radio station in the UK. I was pretty excited to get the opportunity to spread the word about my wildlife photography and promote the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition to such a wide audience. You can listen to the full interview below...

MARINE LITTER STORY IN 6 PAGE AUDUBON FEATURE AND AWARDED BY IUCN

I'm super excited to see my gannet / marine litter story published across 6 pages in the winter issue of Audubon Magazine - the flagship quarterly journal of the National Audubon Society. The same series has also been awarded 3rd place in the Nature Images Awards presented by Terre Sauvage Magazine and IUCN - the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

You can read the full article online on the Audubon site here:

An Annual Rescue Mission to Free Northern Gannets Tangled in Plastic Trash

It's such an important story, which highlights the problem of plastic marine pollution, so I'm stoked to see it getting plenty of attention and exposure on both sides of the Atlantic. It's an international problem and the only real solution is education, so I'm really happy and appreciative that Audubon, Terre Sauvage and IUCN are helping to spread the word.

BRITISH WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHY AWARDS - 9 IMAGES AWARDED

The British Wildlife Photography Awards recently announced the 2016 winners, including nine of my pictures, which were highly commended. A set of six from my Northern Gannet series, featuring the desperate situation on Grassholm Island, where birds become entangled in marine litter was the runner up in the Documentary Series category.

I also received two highly commended in the Urban Wildlife category - a spotted flycatcher nest in an old brick wall and an unusual mistle thrush nest in a traffic light. Lastly, my image of a red fox vixen suckling young cubs in a suburban garden was awarded highly commended in the Behaviour category. A pretty good haul in total!

MARINE LITTER FEATURE IN DAILY MAIL UK AND MAIL ONLINE

I've just had a 2 page conservation story published in the Daily Mail, highlighting the problem of marine litter in the UK and how it affects our wildlife. The piece also went out on the Mail Online, which is the most read online newspaper site in the world, so it's great exposure for the story. I spent last summer working with seabird scientists, researchers and conservationists to document their work, and at the end of the summer, I visited RSPB Grassholm, which lies 8 miles off the coast of Wales and supports 10% of the global population of northern gannets. The press piece focuses on the Grassholm gannets as they are the most severely affected by marine litter in the UK - mainly due to the island's proximity to ocean currents like the Gulf Stream, which brings floating debris into the heart of the gannets' foraging zones. The birds mistake discarded fishing lines and nets for strands of kelp and seaweed, and bring them back to the island to line their nests, but unlike kelp, these man-made plastic fibres are incredibly difficult to break free from once entangled and can be a death sentence. Hopefully some positive changes will come from publishing the story in an outlet with such a wide reach. You can read the online piece here and I will be putting up a new gallery of the full project very soon. Thanks to Wildscreen Exchange for helping me tell the story.

BBC WILDLIFE MAGAZINE OPENERS WITH CHRIS PACKHAM

For the previous two months, my pictures have been used for the opening double page spread in BBC Wildlife Magazine, which is apparently unprecedented! It's a great slot, where Chris Packham discusses a UK wildlife conservation issue.

Last month it was a lesser spotted woodpecker, which I photographed in the Malvern hills in Herefordshire. Lesser spots are the UK's smallest and rarest woodpecker - now considered too rare to be monitored by national surveys. It took a colleague of mine 4 years to locate a lesser spot nest, so I was extremely privileged to be invited to photograph it. I wanted to include the context of the scruffy orchard, as without this unique habitat, these birds wouldn't survive at all in this country. Setting up a shot like this requires a lot of patience and I wouldn't recommend this type of photography without a lot of planning and research and a good awareness of animal behaviour and the laws regarding photographing birds at the nest. it's not worth potentially disturbing a rare species at a sensitive time of year for a picture and I wouldn't have attempted a shot like this without advice from experts and plenty of experience shooting more common birds in the same way.

This month, they used a hedgehog I recently shot for the Avon Wildlife Trust's My Wild City project. My Wild City is a great initiative I am strongly behind, as it's all about "creating a nature-rich city that puts wildlife right on our doorsteps, giving everyone the opportunity to experience the joy of wildlife every day".. What could be better than that?! You can find out more about the project here and if you're interested in AWT's AGM where there'll be a My Wild City showcase where I'll be talking and showing some pictures, you can find out more and book tickets here.

BBC WILDLIFE MAGAZINE - URBAN GOSHAWK FEATURE PUBLISHED

The latest issue of BBC Wildlife Magazine (January 2015) hits the shelves on Monday and I'm excited to share that it's running my Berlin goshawk story. I've been working on this for some time now and it's been a bit of a journey from my first trip out to find them at the beginning of 2013. I've met lots of people working with goshawks and raptors along the way and some have become close friends. I took Ben Hoare, the features editor of Wildlife Mag out to Berlin with me this Summer to meet some of them, so that he could find out a bit more about the project and interview the people working with and monitoring the goshawks before writing the feature. 2015 is the "year of the Goshawk" in Germany, so it's a great time for it to be published and Ben has done a great job in telling the full story. Subscribers to the mag should have their copies already, but it officially goes on sale on Monday 22nd December so please go and check it out.

You can see more of my pictures from this project on my site: www.samhobson.co.uk/urban-goshawk

A web gallery is also being featured on the BBC Discover Wildlife Site: www.discoverwildlife.com/gallery/goshawks-berlin

The behind the scenes video on the Wildlife Mag Youtube Channel is here: http://youtu.be/d2tboE0fePw

Massive thanks to Norbert, Bea, Rainer, Olly, Manuela, Lutz, Felix and all the guys who helped me get the pictures and made it so much fun and big thanks to everyone at Wildlife Mag for making it happen!