After being awarded the Bronze Award in the Creative Imagery category in Bird Photographer of the Year 2018, I am absolutely delighted to have won the new Inspirational Encounters Award in Bird Photographer of the Year 2019. This hugely prestigious international competition received over 13,500 entries from 63 countries, and I am particularly pleased that the sponsors of the category - Wildlife Worldwide - are also donating £1500 to Birdfair 2019’s Conservation Project ‘Conserving Cambodia’s Big Five’. The winning image and accompanying text are below. Please contact me via the Contact page if you wish to publish either or both of them, or would like to commission me to write or photograph. See all the 2019 BPOTY award winners here: https://www.birdpoty.co.uk/bpoty-2019-winners.
Emperors
Emperor. Penguin. Individually words of little distinction, but together an icon of near-mythical proportion. Flightless. The only bird that completely forgoes land. The march. The crazily dedicated parenting. Arguably the most difficult bird in the world to see. But forget for now the travel nightmare, the two days turbulent torture of the ‘never-again' Drake Passage, the teetering on the edge of will-we, won’t-we? Decades of aspiration are finally approaching a culmination. An unexpected route appears through storm-packed sea ice and Antarctica’s fickle summer opens a calm window of blue. This miraculous conspiracy permits no more than half an hour at the colony, including walking time from landing. Borrowed boots pinch, clothing is stiflingly excessive, frustration also boils as the camera tangles inside the rucksack. But actually having made it is too overwhelming, too emotional. I shoot a few images then put the camera away, and for fifteen minutes it is just me, the Emperors and heaven.
