Will's Posts

New Heathrow Terminal 4 Exhibition

Posted on November 18, 2009 at 4:28 pm

If you are flying out of Heathrow Terminal 4 in the next six months then make sure you check out our new photo exhibition situated near gates 7 to 9! On display are some of our favourite wildlife photographs from around the world.

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.

Mysterious Places Contest Results

Posted on November 16, 2009 at 2:04 am

We would like to thank everyone who submitted photos to our Mysterious Places Photo Contest. Matthew and I spent days sifting through thousands of fantastic entries and last week we posted our shortlist of 12 finalists so that you could vote for the “People’s Choice” winner. The voting is now over and we can reveal the overall winners!

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.

(more…)

Caiman by Moonlight

Posted on September 30, 2009 at 1:00 am

We are always on the lookout for original, technically challenging projects. Last year we photographed caiman at night with star trails above. When we returned to the Pantanal earlier this year, one of our harebrained schemes was to photograph caiman by the light of the full moon. There were a few fundamental difficulties that we had to overcome to do this… firstly we had to approach to within a couple of meters of a wild caiman, then set up a camera & tripod beside the reptile, compose the shot in the dark, stay totally still for at least 5 minutes and hope the caiman didn’t move. It was going to be a challenge! Below you can see some of the resulting shots. At first glance the images almost look like they were taken during the day but there are subtle signs that the shots aren’t normal; the stars in the sky, the smooth ethereal water, the eerie lighting…

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 Revisited

Posted on September 23, 2009 at 1:00 am

Last year we visited the Pantanal in Brazil – one of our favourite wildlife photography destinations. We returned with some fantastic images and couldn’t wait to revisit this unique wetland paradise. Earlier in the year we set off on a follow-up trip, visiting three new locations that provided opportunities to photograph a wide range of species.

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!

Katavi, Tanzania

Posted on September 11, 2009 at 12:44 am

We have recently returned from an incredibly productive trip to southern Tanzania. Our primary destination was Katavi national park, a small and very remote area which receives less than 650 visitors per year. In Katavi, game such as hippo, buffalo, zebra and elephant congregates in huge herds. This abundance of animals attracts predators, and prides of lions patrol the flood plains. The wildlife is much shier than in other places we have been due to the low volume of visitors. This made photographing the animals challenging but ultimately more rewarding.

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.

Photographing the Moon

Posted on July 20, 2009 at 1:17 am

On this day, 40 years ago, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first human beings to set foot on the surface of the moon. To celebrate the anniversary of this incredible achievement, we have decided to post a few of our favourite lunar photographs.

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!

Travel Photography Contest: Mysterious Places

Posted on June 28, 2009 at 9:47 pm

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!