Wednesday 20 January 2010

Too Good to be...



Busy. Busy Busy. What with delivering pictures, redesigning my business cards and moving Facebook pages, i haven't blogged in quite a while. To be honest i haven't really had that much to say. That was until i saw a bit of news today that made me look and say.... ahhh yes with a 'thought it was' kind of look on my face.

Today it was announced that the Wildlife photographer of the Year competition was not going to award the £10,000 prize money to the winner, Jose Luis Rodriguez, and that his image of a wolf jumping over a fence would be removed from the competition's exhibition. The reason was that the wolf was likely to be a trained model. Not wild at all. Experts compared the winning picture to pictures of Ossian, a tame wolf that lives at a zoological park near Madrid called Canada Real. They believe it is the same wolf due to the distinctive markings.

My first reaction when i saw the winning photo was indeed wow. It is a remarkable photo, but the more i looked at it, the more i wondered how it was taken. Wildlife photography is IMMENSELY difficult and often a one moment, one frame captures all affair. No second chances. Ask yourself... what made the wolf jump like that? Didn't it mind the camera being there and the flashgun too? It certainly doesn't look like it was taken using a telephoto, so the camera could have been quite close, at human eye level and just several metres away from the wolf. Wolves are pretty timid creatures, especially where humans are concerned.

The image may be real, but now the photographer will have to categorically prove to the world that the wolf photograph is authentic. That will not be an easy thing to do.

1 comment:

janice said...

It was really an amazing photo but I wonder why this wolf jump and how could a camera takes that photo closely.