BBC Wildlife Magazine have just launched a new YouTube channel, hosted by award winning wildlife photographer, best selling author and TV presenter Mark Carwardine. The channel is geared towards helping wildlife photographers of any level with practical tips, interviews and advice from top wildlife photographers and fresh, creative ideas to help them relish and master their craft. For the launch episode, Mark interviewed me to find out how I went about crafting my image of a red fox in front of the Clifton Suspension Bridge (or “the best urban fox picture ever taken” according to Mark!!). To find out the story behind the image and how I went about planning from concept to execution, watch the video below and make sure to subscribe to the channel.
WILDLIFE
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.
BBC COUNTRYFILE - NATURE IN THE CITY
I’ve had a few TV spots recently, including this great feature on Countryfile about urban wildlife at London’s Woodberry Wetlands. Countryfile is regularly the most watched programme on the BBC, so it’s great that they dedicated a whole episode to nature in the city. I was interviewed about my urban wildlife photography by Anita Rani, who was pretty excited to see all of the wildlife thriving at this wetland in the UK’s capital city. Sony lent me an A9 for the day and Laowa did the same with their crazy 15mm macro, which I used to capture a few images, which featured in the piece.
I also recently featured on a spot on the One Show with Mike Dilger about urban foxes. It was great fun and we lucked out when a fox walked directly between us and the camera operator…
It’s also worth checking out my interview with fellow fox photographer Matthew Maran. The podcast is here on his site and here on the main Apple Podcasts site. Matt’s website is worth checking out if you’re into foxes too!
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 😃.
WORKSHOP WAGON LAUNCH
in ADVENTURE, PHOTOGRAPHY, TRAVEL, WILDLIFE, WORKSHOPS
I’m happy to announce that I am now offering wildlife photography workshops 😃
…And just before I get started, please check out my recent urban wildlife feature on PetaPixel.
So… After a lot of consideration and a lot of email enquiries, I’ve decided it’s time to offer one-to-one and small group wildlife photography workshops. Never one to do things by halves, I decided to make my workshops unique by creating the ultimate wildlife photography workshop wagon! My motivation in doing this is to offer more than just practical field skills - a mobile studio means I can offer training in image selection, workflow, processing, editing and pitching all on location. So, after sourcing a panel van with all of the right spec (including 4-wheel drive!), I then proceeded to cut a bunch of big holes in it so that I could add all of the necessary bells and whistles that would make it the ideal vehicle / mobile studio to teach wildlife photography on the road.
It’s pretty unnerving watching your expensive new van get hacked to pieces, but it was in safe hands and in less than a month, I had a fully converted bespoke campervan / mobile studio, complete with solar power, wifi, gps, heating, gas hobs, a fridge, a table and a bunch of lights, sockets and storage. Now for the fun part - the test drive! I decided to test the new wagon out properly to see how it would fare on an extended road-trip and took it on a tour of the Pyrenees and the Alps…
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 MAGAZINE FRONT COVER
British Wildlife magazine is a bit of a national institution. It was first published in 1989 and has always been respected amongst naturalists for being an unassuming, informative and accessible publication that treads the line between academic journal and newsstand title. I've long been a subscriber, so it's great to see my fox image on the February cover. British Wildlife is bimonthly and the latest issue can be purchased here.
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.
SURPRISE HAWKSBILL HATCHLINGS IN SAINT LUCIA
in PHOTOGRAPHY, TRAVEL, WILDLIFE, ADVENTURE, BIRDS
I've just returned from Saint Lucia, after being invited back by Anse Chastanet Eco Resort for the second time. Last time I was commissioned to showcase the amazing bird life that can be found on the island, which you can read about here. This time it was more of a holiday as a thank you for the previous job and for getting features out in UK birdwatching magazines to help promote the resort and island. I took my camera just in case and I'm glad I did as there were a few surprises in store...
Firstly, I arrived to find that critically endangered HAWKSBILL TURTLES were hatching right on the Anse Chastenet beach! Meno (pictured) told me that it was the second time that week hatchlings had been emerging and that there was at least one more batch of eggs that could hatch any day. Amazing!
The next surprise was the rain. The rainy season was pretty late and when I arrived, everyone was talking about how dry it had been - but that was about to change. It bucketed down from the second day, but fortunately the rain in Saint Lucia isn't as bad as in the UK and the showers are usually pretty short during the day, and they don't stop the sun from shining. In fact it provided some nice opportunities to capture some images like this spotted sandpiper on Anse Chastenet beach, where I used backlight from the early evening sun to highlight the raindrops.
There were a couple of birds I wanted to see this time that I didn't manage to see on my first trip, and top of the list was the rufous-throated solitaire or "mountain whistler" as it is known locally. I'd heard them singing previously at Des Cartiers, but I knew that the Edmund Forest Reserve was supposed to be better and there was a good chance of seeing some Jacquots there too. We only had a few hours to walk the trails, but we saw plenty of parrots (although too distant for pictures) and Smith who was guiding was red-hot at calling the solitaires down by whistling their song.
My next big surprise was an osprey fishing in the stream at Soufriere, just outside the resort. Meno had seen it in the early morning on the way in to work, so I thought I'd chance it the next day, knowing full well that the likelihood of it still being there was pretty remote. My luck was in though and although we didn't see it catch anything, it made a few attempts and some very close fly-bys. What a bird!
On the last morning of the trip, I went to Bouton to look for parrots, and found a golden apple tree with one feeding in it just before sunrise. It left just before it was light enough for pictures, so I spent the rest of the morning waiting and hoping that they'd return. Unfortunately, my luck had run out and they didn't show, but I kept myself busy watching this grey kingbird trying to swallow these fruits that were just a little bit too big to fit down its throat. Normally they are flycatchers, and I hadn't seen them do this before - it would toss the fruit in the air and open its bill as wide as possible, hoping it would land at the right angle to swallow. It must have tried for about 20 minutes, before it finally got it down!
If you are interested in seeing or photographing the birdlife of Saint Lucia, I am currently putting together a list of contacts for future tours, so please get in touch. Massive thanks to Karolin and Nick for the invite, Jonathan, Meno and all the resort staff for making sure we had such a great time.
BBC WILDLIFE MAGAZINE - GULL FEATURE PUBLISHED
BBC Wildlife Magazine (October 2015) has just published my gull feature, which I've been working on for the past couple of years. It follows a summer of hysteria in the British media about gulls attacking people and their pets and hopefully provides a refreshingly accurate take on the situation which looks at the latest research and science and interviews experts in the field - many of which I've had the privilege to work with during the project. We published the feature early due to the media frenzy this summer, so I'm still working on the project, but these are some of my favourite pictures that either made the feature or will hopefully be published when the project is complete.
BRITISH WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHY AWARDS - HIGHLY COMMENDED
The winners of the British Wildlife Photography Awards have been announced this week and one of my toad images from this series received a highly commended in the urban nature category. I think it's a great time for UK wildlife photography at the moment - there are so many talented photographers (particularly the young guys) producing new and exciting work, so I was pleased to have a fun evening at the awards ceremony catching up with some of them :)
British Wildlife Photography Awards - Collection 6 with all of the winning images from 2015 is available here.
SCOTTISH NATURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL
in NEW WORK, PHOTOGRAPHY, TALKS, LECTURES, WILDLIFE
I'm just back from speaking at the Scottish Nature Photography Festival about telling stories with wildlife photography. I shared some new work, including some images from my upcoming gull feature in BBC Wildlife Magazine, a few images from a gannet story I am currently working on and a few one-off images, like this red fox vixen suckling cubs that are just a week out of the den I photographed earlier in the summer. I've never seen an up close wide shot of this behaviour before and I was pretty privileged to witness such a tender and vulnerable moment. I shot this using a Pocket Wizard remote and hid my Nikon D750 inside a Peli Case to muffle the sound. I filled in the shadows with two low-powered speedlites, but the main key light is from the sun and I only shot 1 frame to minimise disturbance.
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.
WILD BRISTOL SOLO EXHIBITION AND TALK - IN ASSOCIATION WITH NATURE PICTURE LIBRARY
in PHOTOGRAPHY, TALKS, EXHIBITIONS, WILDLIFE
For the whole of June, my work will be exhibited in Bristol at the Folk House Gallery on Park Street. It's a solo exhibition themed around local Bristol wildlife and I'm donating 10% of any print sales to the Avon Wildlife Trust. There will also be a talk by myself and photographer Nick Upton on Friday 12th June, sponsored by Nature Picture Library, with all proceeds also being donated to the Avon Wildlife Trust. For more info. and tickets, please check out bit.ly/wildbristol
OUTDOOR PHOTOGRAPHY - OPENING SHOT
Outdoor Photography Magazine has just published one of my recent Toad Migration images as their Opening Shot - an opening DPS in June issue 192, which went on sale this week. I have been watching these toads climb the same hill in Bristol for a few years, but decided that in 2015, I'd have a go at lighting them with a GL-1 tungsten hotlight to match the city lights in the background. I always enjoy trying to do something different with common subjects and had loads of fun capturing the character of this often overlooked species.
GUARDIAN INTERVIEW - WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE
I was recently interviewed by the Guardian Newspaper about my photography and particularly why I choose to focus on urban wildlife. You can read the full story on the Guardian Wildlife Photographer of the Year Microsite here:
Where The Wild Things Are: Discovering Urban Wildlife With Photographer Sam Hobson
ADORAMA TV INTERVIEW
I'm a bit behind with my latest posts as I've been taking some time for paternity leave. It's been a roller coaster but tons of fun and I'm really enjoying being a dad for the first time. I've been working on some local projects in the background, so will catch up with things on here when they are published in the coming weeks. For now, here's an interview about my work that I did for Adorama TV at the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Exhibition at the Natural History Museum.
nb. The black-headed gull image at 1:34 is not mine - I was showing the interviewer some techniques after the interview and I set up the camera, but she took the picture!
OBSERVER FEATURE - WHEN ANIMALS GO WILD IN THE CITY
My urban wildlife pictures have just been used to illustrate a feature in the Observer's monthly technology, science and ideas supplement. It's great to see urban wildlife getting some decent coverage in a national newspaper with such a varied readership and it always feels good to reach new people with my work when it has the potential to spark an interest in wildlife in the city.
The feature by Adam Vaughn can be read on the Guardian / Observer site here: "When Animals Go Wild in The City"