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"Nature's Best" Windland Smith Rice International Awards |
I have the great honor of being selected as a category winner in the annual "Nature's Best Photography" Windland Smith Rice International Awards competition. This is a nature photography competition open to all photographers worldwide. This year's competition saw over 24,000 images from over 1200 photographers representing 50 countries. It is truly a great honor to be selected as a category winner (Small World Category) with the hummingbird image seen in the magazine mockup below. This image and the story behind it appear in the Fall/Winter issue of Nature's Best Photography magazine. This image also hung in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington D. C. through April 2015. |
Below is the text from the magazine page layout above. | |
Booted Racket-tail Hummingbirds WWW.BLUEICEBERG.COM THE STORY: “While attempting tophotograph hummingbirds for the first time, I quickly realized that if I saw the picture in the viewfinder before tripping the shutter, I was too late. Capturing their interactions meant learning their behaviors first and then anticipating what would happen next. The bird on the right was particularly intolerant of any other racket-tails in his territory. I noticed the ‘troublemaker’ perched in a nearby tree. When a second male came to feed, the troublemaker immediately flew from his branch to chase him. He had done this many times before and I always missed the shot. This time I decided to shoot well before he reached his intended target. As he flew into view from the right, still a good four feet from his rival, I decided to trip the shutter. By the time the camera shutter actually tripped, the two birds had come together…exactly where I was focused on the red banana flower. No more than a second had passed from the time I first decided to shoot until the two birds were out of sight.” CAMERA: Canon EOS 7D; 100mm-400mm IS lens at180mm; 1/200 sec at ƒ/18; ISO 125; electronic cable release; Vivitar 285HV strobes (5) at 1/16th power; flash triggered by CowboyStudio radio transmitter in hot shoe; Bogen 3035 tripod; pan/tilt head; |
“If an image I have taken helps to awaken an appreciation of nature in someone else, then I have been given the ultimate compliment.”
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Nature has been my passion as far back as I can remember. As a child growing up in South Florida, I spent a great deal of time outdoors exploring the Everglades or SCUBA diving in the Florida Keys. I started photography as a way to follow my passion for observing wildlife. My formal education is as a pharmacist. I traded my white coat for camouflage in 1992 and have been pursuing my passion ever since. I am a self-taught photographer, and I enjoy underwater photography as well as terrestrial. My travels have now taken me to every continent.
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