To coincide with the exhibition we have launched a brand new website: WildExhibition.com. On the site you can find out more about the exhibition and see all of the featured photographs. You can also check out our new series of limited edition prints, our 2010 calendar and greeting cards featuring photos from the exhibition.

We visited Heathrow Airport last night to view the exhibition for the first time… it was wonderful to see our images printed large and it was nice to observe other people looking at our work. You can view our exclusive behind the scenes pictures from the exhibition on our facebook fan page.

Finally, if you get the opportunity to see the exhibition then please let us know what you think!

For more information please visit WildExhibition.com.

Before proceeding, we would like to thank our terrific sponsors, Lensbaby and SmugMug, who generously donated over $2,000 in prizes! All of the photographers below receive a prize as described on this page.

The overall contest winner is Paul Marcellini with his wonderful image taken in a Florida swamp. The spooky atmosphere, the twisted trees and the detail of the alligator drag-marks in the foreground create an image that epitomises the theme “Mysterious Places”. Congratulations to Paul for creating a truly original and striking shot!

Given the success of this contest, we will certainly be launching another photo competition in the near future! If you would like to be notified when this competition is announced then please subscribe to our blog via RSS feed or email.

Winner:

People’s Choice:

Runners-up:

Highly Commended:

Thanks once again to everyone who entered this competition and congratulations to our winners.

If you would like to be notified when we launch our next contest then please subscribe to our blog via RSS feed or email.

The Virunga Massif is blanketed by a thick, impenetrable jungle. The gorillas utilise the great diversity of flora found in this region by consuming up to 70 different plant species, including the thistles and giant stinging nettles that force anyone visiting the park to wear gloves and thick jackets! The gorillas inhabit the slopes of the volcanoes up to an altitude exceeding 4,000m. Temperatures here can drop as low as 0 degrees Celsius meaning that mountain gorillas are generally bigger, and have much longer hair than other gorilla subspecies. Adult males can be twice the size of females, with an arm span of 2.25m and a weight of 204–227 kg! They are known as silverbacks because of the saddle of grey hair that adorns their backs.

Gorillas are social animals and tend to live in groups of varying size. In all, there are upwards of 10 habituated groups that live on the Rwandan side of the Virunga Massif. At the start of each day, the park authorities allocate a maximum of 8 visitors to a professional guide who is responsible for leading the trek to the gorillas. On our first day, we visited the Umubano group, a relatively small family of 8 gorillas. They seemed to be quite shy, hiding behind the leaves and never looking towards our cameras. Naturally this made it difficult to take photographs. On the subsequent days we visited the Sabinyo, Hirwa and Group 13 families. Out of these, our favourite was Group 13.

Group 13 has around 25 individuals, all led by a dominant male silverback called “Agashya”, meaning “special one”. As alpha male, he has sole breeding rights over the twelve females in his group. The other half of his group consists entirely of baby gorillas under 3 years of age. It was a wonderful experience to watch these young gorillas play fighting and tumbling around in the foliage! For an hour, we followed the family through the jungle, photographing them as they snacked on bamboo shoots. Due to the alcohol content of the bamboo, the young gorillas became progressively more rowdy in their play (even the massive silverback was noticeably tipsy!). They would climb up the trees and swing from the vines, and on a number of occasions they fell to the ground in a heap of leaves and fur!

It was a constant struggle to try and photograph all the action without getting distracting branches or vines in the frame. The dense foliage eliminated most of the ambient light, forcing us to use wide-apertures and high ISO speeds. One of the most valuable tips to remember when photographing gorillas (or any animal that has black fur) is to set your camera’s exposure compensation to around -2/3 or -1. This is because your camera is tricked by the black fur into thinking the conditions are darker than they actually are.

Rwanda is a densely populated country, and almost every inch of the uninhabited or unprotected land has been transformed into a patchwork of fields and terraces. Farms and settlements push right up against the stone wall boundary of the National Park. The pressure on the gorillas’ habitat is clearly visible. However, Rwanda has a stable tourist infrastructure in place and puts much emphasis on the conservation of the gorillas and the preservation of their habitat. Ecotourism provides the necessary funding to initiate conservation and much of the money generated from the purchase of park permits goes into paying for guides, guards, trackers and also local community projects. Ultimately, if the local people benefit from gorilla tourism, there is less incentive for them to poach.

Rwanda is a beautiful country that has experienced a troubled past, but the kindness and willingness of its people to accept visitors to their country does not go unnoticed. We came away from this trip feeling privileged and humbled that we had seen both Rwanda and the incredible mountain gorillas.

To take these shots, we spent a whole night, from 10pm to 5am patrolling the banks of the Rio Negro in search of suitable caiman. We decided to split up, each of us taking a camera and tripod in order to double our chances of getting some decent shots. Being alone with the caiman on the dark river bank was a spooky experience!

Whenever we spotted a caiman in a good position, we moved painfully slowly to avoid disturbing it. In order to photograph the caiman as a part of their environment, we tried to get close enough so that we could use a wide-angle lens. The long exposures typically took upwards of 5 minutes. During this time, we had fish nibbling on our feet and mosquitoes sucking our blood. We couldn’t stop them for fear of disturbing the caiman! At one point we noticed a caiman chomping on a freshly caught piranha – the last thing you want to see when you are wading in the river with bare legs and feet!

When the Sun’s glow started to light up the sky in the East, we squelched back to our lodge for some breakfast and a flagon of coffee… needless to say, we were totally shattered for the rest of the day!

The Pantanal is a tropical wetland area approximately eighteen times the size of the Florida Everglades. What makes it special is that you can observe wildlife that is almost impossible to see anywhere else in South America. The Pantanal ecosystem relies on a yearly flood cycle – during the dry season, the landscape consists of open savannah, patches of forest and isolated brackish lakes. However, when the rain arrives later in the year, up to 80% of the Pantanal is transformed into a saturated expanse of flooded land.

One of the creatures we were keen to photograph was the Giant Anteater. These animals are notoriously hard to come across in the dense rainforest that covers much of South America, however, in the Pantanal they can be found in the fields that line the roadside! We soon found that photographing anteaters wasn’t as easy as locating them… their long bodies made it hard to find a pleasing composition and focusing on their eyes as they waved their heads around took some skill! By far the biggest challenge though, was locating and removing the ticks that had swarmed over us as we crawled around in the dry grass. Even as we write this our bodies are still covered in purple tick bites.

The highlight of any trip to the Pantanal is seeing the beautiful Hyacinth Macaw. These birds became critically endangered due to the illegal pet trade and the destruction of suitable nesting trees. However, there has been a successful breeding program in the Pantanal and they are making a strong comeback. We were lucky enough to find a pair of nesting Macaws and one morning we set up our gear on the roof of a truck to photograph them. We managed to get some lovely shots of these characterful birds.

One downside of visiting an enormous swamp such as the Pantanal is the mosquitoes! Often we had to make the difficult decision… swat the mossies that were carpeting our bodies or keep our cameras up to our eyes, ready to photograph the animal we were watching. For some reason, coatis seemed to particularly enjoy mossified areas and whenever we tried to photograph them we ended up getting completely obliterated by the Pantanal Air Force!

The second location that we visited, a Fazenda called “Barranco Alto”, turned out to be an incredible place to see tapirs. In total we saw five individuals which is quite amazing considering how shy and elusive these animals are. On one occasion, we came across a young tapir sleeping in the middle of brackish lake. Initially, we didn’t even consider photographing it as 100m of waist-high, gungy green mud lay between us and the tapir. However, Matthew decided to brave the toxic swamp and began to wade. We really didn’t think that it would work… how close could you possibly get to a wild tapir? The answer is very close… close enough to use a wide angle lens!

An essential item in any wildlife photographer’s toolbox is the camera trap. This consists of an infrared beam which triggers a camera when broken. Day or night, whenever we had a spare moment, we would traipse off into the bush looking for suitable spots to set up. Unfortunately we were not lucky enough to catch a shot of a jaguar, but we did manage to photograph some crab eating foxes and a curious peccary!

In August 2009 we had the opportunity to visit Mahale for a second time. On this occasion our cameras and lenses were better suited to the low light conditions of the jungle and we both had much more photographic experience.

The region is currently home to around 800 chimpanzees though only one troupe consisting of roughly 60 animals is habituated to people. This is known as the “M” group. This group was first habituated back in 1965 by Toshisada Nishida, a Japanese researcher. During our stay we where fortunate enough to meet Professor Nishida who happened to be in Mahale on holiday… his wealth of knowledge and stories about the chimps made for some fascinating conversations.

Chimpanzees are very social creatures and it is amazing to observe the complex hierarchies and relationships that exist within the troupe. At the top of this hierarchy is an alpha male chimpanzee – he can be recognised as all the other chimps show him great respect.

M group is currently under the tyrannical reign of Pimu, a very aggressive chimp. His violence has generated an unsettled atmosphere throughout the troupe, and we witnessed a number of impressive displays of strength and aggression from the big males. It was noticeable that the atmosphere was much more tense than in 2005 when Alofu was the alpha male.

One of the main concerns for the safety of the chimpanzees is disease transmission from humans. In recent years, 12 chimpanzees have died from the flu virus that would have been caught from visitors or researchers. Consequently, everyone who observes the chimps must wear face masks. The downside is that they caused our viewfinders to constantly fog up, so we had to try and hold our breath when taking photos – not an easy thing to do after a tough trek! At all times, we had to keep a distance of at least 10m from the chimps.

It was great to catch up on the stories of all the chimpanzees that we remembered from 2005. Once again we were very sad to leave Mahale and the chimps who have almost begun to feel like old friends.

We set ourselves a gruelling schedule: off looking for wildlife before dawn, backing up photos at lunch, out again in the afternoon and then processing photos late into the night. Our constant companions throughout the day were the tsetse flies – large, almost invincible flies with a ferocious bite. They had a knack of launching coordinated attacks right at the crucial moment of taking a photograph and it wasn’t long before we were covered with angry red bites!

We dedicated many hours to photographing a pride of lions which lived near our camp on the Katisunga floodplain. The pride consisted of four females and six beautiful cubs. The hours we spent with them were rewarded with some stunning photos.

Katavi is also a great place to see a wide range of interesting bird species. One morning we lay beside a croc infested river with a blanket over us to photograph sand grouse as they came down to drink. One of our favourite creatures was a Verreaux’s Eagle Owl which often used a perch overlooking the plain. We spent a long time trying to capture some of its many amusing expressions!

Our ten days in Katavi were a fantastic experience. We have many more photos which we will be sharing in due course. Our next post will be about the Mahale Mountains National Park and the wild chimpanzees that we photographed there.

Eiffel Tower

The moon can often add an additional dimension to an otherwise normal photograph. Recently I was visiting the Eiffel Tower in Paris when I noticed the moon rising above the city. I moved into a position where I could photograph the Eiffel Tower with the moon behind. I took a bracketed sequence of shots and then combined them as an HDR image so that I could balance out the illuminated tower with the moonlit clouds and the streetlights below.

Lunar Eclipse

On 3rd/4th March 2007, we were lucky to be in the right place at the right time; watching a total lunar eclipse under a clear night sky. We set up our 400mm f/2.8 lens and stacked a 1.4x and a 2x teleconverter to give us a focal length of 1,120mm! Camera shake was amplified at this huge focal length, so to minimise vibrations we used a shutter release cord and set the camera to “mirror lock-up” mode. Mirror lock-up raises the mirror in the camera early and therefore reduces vibrations when the shot is taken (putting your camera into “live view” mode would also achieve this). At this focal length the moon travelled surprisingly fast across the viewfinder so we need a shutter speed of at least 0.6s to get the moon sharp (note that serious astro-photographers would have used a tracking mount to move the camera at the same rate as the Earth’s rotation).

During the height of the eclipse, the moon goes red as the only light reaching it has to travel through the Earth’s atmosphere. The moon also becomes much dimmer so we had to push the camera all the way up to ISO 1600 to capture the phenomenon. You can see the full gallery showing the progression of the lunar eclipse here.

Moon Beam

This is an experimental photograph that we took last year in Botswana. There was a lot of dust in the air so the moon was not very bright. This allowed us to take a long exposure of the moon as it ascended without the shot completely blowing out. The resulting image looks like something out of Independence Day – a beam of light coming from an alien spacecraft!

In order to create a series of massive prints, I needed to take very high resolution images. The problem with making big prints from 35mm DSLR files is that they often require interpolation to get the required dimensions at an output resolution of 300dpi. The only way of avoiding this is to use a camera that already has a high native resolution, i.e. lots of megapixels! I’ve always wondered about the quality that digital medium format systems could offer and since I was recently given the opportunity to borrow one, I thought this project would be the perfect chance to try it out and see for myself what all the fuss was about!

The camera that I used was the Hasselblad H3DII-39, a 39mp beast with a 48×36mm sensor (approximately double the size of a 35mm frame). The huge sensor size results in astounding detail, low noise levels and subtle tonal gradations. The 16 bit files at ISO 50 have amazing vibrancy and dynamic range.

After getting my hands on the camera and spending a bit of time figuring out how to use it, I started to set up my first shot. I was using a 120mm f/4.0 macro lens. The close working distance coupled with the large sensor meant that typical apertures necessary for a decent depth of field and sharpness were around f/16 to f/32.

Photographing the flowers against a black background often meant the Hasselblad’s metering system wasn’t able to provide accurate results. Each photograph would have different amounts of the frame filled with the flower, meaning that most of the metering modes (centre-weighted and averaged) were fooled. To get reliable exposures I used a Sekonic light meter and I reduced the contrast by using a reflector to shade the flowers.

Due to the small apertures and working distances, a tripod was essential to prevent camera shake. Using mirror lock-up and a shutter delay of between 5-10 seconds allowed the camera vibrations to dampen before the image was recorded. This is very important, since the high resolution of the Hasseblad’s sensor makes poor focus and camera movements immediately obvious, especially when blown up to 100%. However, if everything remains sharp then the level of detail captured by the 39 megapixel sensor is just astounding.

Apart from enjoying something a bit different, I have learnt that branching out and diversifying your subjects can really improve other aspects of your photography, both technically and creatively.

This competition is now closed!

We are excited to announce the second Burrard-Lucas photography competition! With over $2,000 in prizes, this contest promises to be even bigger than the first!

This is a travel photography contest with the theme “Mysterious Places”. Let your imagination and creativity run wild!

This competition has been generously sponsored by Lensbaby and SmugMug. We have some fantastic prizes on offer…

Prizes

1x Overall Winner:

1x People’s Choice Winner:

2x Runners up:

8x Highly Commended:

The “People’s Choice” winner will be selected by public vote at the end of the contest.

The deadline for entry is 31st October 2009. Please read the rules before entering.

More about the prizes…

Lensbaby

Lensbaby makes selective focus SLR lenses which work on Canon, Nikon, Sony, Olympus, and Pentax cameras.

The Lensbaby Composer is the prefect travel companion; it is compact, lightweight and full of creative potential! Based on a unique and innovative ball and socket configuration, the Composer delivers smooth selective focus photography with unparalleled ease. Photographers simply tilt the lens to a desired angle and then focus with a focusing ring. The result is an area of sharp focus (the “Sweet Spot”) that can be moved around the frame.

Click here to find out more about the Composer.

The Lensbaby Muse is an easy to use lens that opens up a new realm of fun in focusing! Squeeze the Muse to focus, and bend your “Sweet Spot” around the frame.

Click here to find out more about the Muse.

The new Lensbaby Optic Swap System gives you the freedom to break the rules and express your vision even further. The system works with all of Lensbaby’s new lenses and includes Double Glass, Single Glass, Plastic, and Pinhole / Zoneplate Optics. Each optic has its own unique look and feel.

Click here for a comparison of different optics.

SmugMug

SmugMug offers you everything you need to kick start your online presence! From displaying photos on your own personal website through to printing and selling your work, Smugmug provides an easy to use, customizable and fully featured solution. Features of both pro and power accounts include unlimited storage and bandwidth, customisable themes and web addresses, video hosting, password protected galleries, dedicated support and much more! Pro accounts also allow you to make a profit by setting your own prices for print and digital download purchases – exactly what you need to get your online photography business up and running!

Click here for an overview of SmugMug’s services.
Click here for a description of SmugMug’s Pro service.
Click here for a full listing of SmugMug account features.

Rules

• This competition is open to participants worldwide, aged 18 or over on the closing date.
• There is no entry fee.
• You must be the photographer and owner of the copyright for any image entered.
• Entrants can submit a maximum of three images to this contest.
• Please keep digital manipulation such as cloning and compositing to a minimum; your photograph should faithfully represent the scene as you saw it. HDR images are allowed.
• Submitted images should be a minimum of 1024 pixels along the long edge.
• Images must not include a watermark or border.
• You will retain copyright of your entries at all times and will always be credited alongside your picture.
• By entering this competition, you grant us a non-exclusive licence to display your photograph in connection with this contest. This may include syndication of the 12 winning photographs by the media (but only in connection with this contest). Winners will always be informed if their photographs are syndicated and will always be credited next to their image.
• Under no-circumstance will we use submitted images for commercial gain unless it has been agreed on a case by case basis with the photographer.
• The deadline for entry is 31st October 2009.
• People’s Choice prize voting will run from 7th-14th November 2009.
• All winners will be announced on 16th November 2009.
• You can enter online here.

This competition is now closed!