BBC News: Gazing monkeys image wins top wildlife photo award

This is why I’m finding it hard as a new comer trying to learn. There are photos like this that are over done (for me) but they seem to get a lot of attention / comments. Will this make other new comers go the same way seeing the positive comments and attention they get? I have seen it quite a bit recently.
 
The trouble I have with these is that it seems you have to travel to exotic locations.
I liked one from previous years superimposing a bird with an aircraft near heathrow.
 
Tatts agree with you. Perhaps guilty myself on occasion but this is one of the worst I have seen......winning an award IMHO [emoji849]
 
This is why I’m finding it hard as a new comer trying to learn. There are photos like this that are over done (for me) but they seem to get a lot of attention / comments. Will this make other new comers go the same way seeing the positive comments and attention they get? I have seen it quite a bit recently.

It's only an issue if you're looking for comments and attention.
 
It's only an issue if you're looking for comments and attention.
But if you’re a new comer going through the over saturation stage and you’re getting that attention then you won’t know any different and might not progress? Also who doesn’t like a nice comment though regardless of what it’s about?
 
I'm not sure that I would be so critical of this photo (unlike the youth 'landscape' winner) ... checking Google images of the Snub-nosed Monkey I think the colours are probably quite accurate.
The comment says:-
The Dutchman had to follow the troop for many days to understand the animals' dynamics and predict their behaviour. His goal was to show in one shot the beautiful hair on a male snub-nosed monkey's back, and the creature's blue face.

For me he has accomplished that and obviously took time and effort in following the group of monkeys in order to get that image.
Maybe sad for UK wildlife togs that it came from an 'exotic' location but then Snub-nosed Monkeys aren't found in the UK!
 
The trouble I have with these is that it seems you have to travel to exotic locations.
I liked one from previous years superimposing a bird with an aircraft near heathrow.
I'd hope they judged it on content rather than because it came from an exotic location, however I do tend to agree that coming from an exotic location of a rare species (or at least rare to the UK) does tend to give some photos a head-start which is plainly unfair (IMHO).
Having viewed the photo it does look like it's massively over-saturated, be good to know if it was/wasnt.
 
Composition wise I quite like it though - if you think of it as a portrait

Exoctic locations always seem to come up with the young photographer award, arctic circle photographing polar bears etc
 
But if you’re a new comer going through the over saturation stage and you’re getting that attention then you won’t know any different and might not progress? Also who doesn’t like a nice comment though regardless of what it’s about?
A nice comment on here is worth 100 on Facebook so it really depends where the comments are coming from . As a newbie aim to get comments and feedback from other photographers not Facebook Frank
 
A nice comment on here is worth 100 on Facebook so it really depends where the comments are coming from . As a newbie aim to get comments and feedback from other photographers not Facebook Frank

But that’s my point, they also don’t know this either :)
 
Photography is subjective.

If YOU like your images then that should be enough.

Join a camera club and enter competitions. Then you'll see some judges want you to increase the saturation or lessen it, put things into the image or remove them.

Just do it for yourself.
 
It is beautifully lit, and although he lifted it with flash, that is not apparent at all.
I suspect the colour is accurate, however garish it might seem to us.
 
I think that it is a good photo, sometimes the winners are quite arty as opposed to clear photos
 
I think it's a wonderful photo. Lovely light which I am certain has contributed to the saturation of colours. Well done that man
 
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Some interesting comments. I don't see any evidence that flash was used and I would have though a bit unpractical. Also any natural light would also have been reflected on the background, unless it was a shaft of light falling directly on the [emoji205] through the jungle canopy which would be very lucky indeed. I am sure these primates are as colourful as depicted but to my eyes the image looks so unatural. Great composition for sure though!
 
To me as someone whom obsessively makes images of wildlife,I don't know how saturated this image is............maybe because i'm at that stage,in my own learning curve or maybe because I don't know the species or the place or the light from real world life experience.......................... which begs the question:.how can one possibly evaluate light or colour or saturation if one has never seen this in the flesh??


To me the image maker did his groundwork had a vision in mind of an image he wanted to capture and got it.

So me personally I like the image, but I don't feel blown away like I should maybe??,for an image that has just won WPOTY. If I cut an ear in a hare I feel I've failed so a cut tail is already speaking to me.

Others might have more experience both with in the photography aspect and the natural history aspect. surely as an image maker we are questing for magical shafts of light in woodland to light our subjects,serendipity helps but that quest is already in place..I can't knock a photographer that found that it isn't just luck,a big player sure ,but not just luck

To me this is a cracking image that I have really not got the expertise to evaluate,but it doesn't blow me away like I feel an image winning a comp like this really should................ the winner of WPOTY should simply blow my mind,


I think that's my take right there,this is the winner of wildlife photograph of the year,it's cool but is it not mind blowing


it really should be !! ;)

Stu

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I may be on my own here, but that's ok.

A wildlife image can be interesting, breathtaking, fascinating and loads of other adjectives but, for me, can't be mind blowing compared to an image like this...

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This is literally head blowing off territory. Some of us just prefer something more aesthetically and artistically mind-blowing. Event reporting is precisely that in the first instance and any artiness is mostly just an afterthought if it is to be found at all. Some of us prefer beauty, harmony and manifestation of God to war and destruction.
 
This is literally head blowing off territory. Some of us just prefer something more aesthetically and artistically mind-blowing. Event reporting is precisely that in the first instance and any artiness is mostly just an afterthought if it is to be found at all. Some of us prefer beauty, harmony and manifestation of God to war and destruction.
Gotta admit it's a f*****g good photo though. One that will be shown again and again long after the monkey pic has been forgotten.

FWIW my fave pic from the Wildlife comp is the one of the hellbender.
 
Gotta admit it's a f*****g good photo though. One that will be shown again and again long after the monkey pic has been forgotten.

FWIW my fave pic from the Wildlife comp is the one of the hellbender.

Oh, yes indeed but for different reasons. It will have a place in history books but I would never ever allow it in my bedroom.

The monkeys you never know might end up in a private collection or in a dark corner in a museum. It may have a life but it won't be publicly very famous
 
I can tell it's flash. It's a monkey photoshoot. Quite like it but it doesn't blow my mind or anything.
 
Oh, yes indeed but for different reasons. It will have a place in history books but I would never ever allow it in my bedroom.

Different strokes. I'd be happy to have that on my wall. Although I tend to prefer looking at photographs in books.
 
I can tell it's flash. It's a monkey photoshoot. Quite like it but it doesn't blow my mind or anything.

It is very subtle and without it I don't think the image would be as strong. It really opens up the colour and draws the texture in the fur. Would you get same with diffused golden hour light? Probably similar if you are lucky but background would look quite different and I fear for the worse.
 
I think that you massively out of touch with modern press photography in Britain.

Do you mean staged images, like the "drowned" Syrian boy. Not UK example but you get the idea what I am alluding to.
 
No, I mean genuinely artistic ways of portraying the news. It's in the national newspapers every single day.
 
The trouble I have with these is that it seems you have to travel to exotic locations.
I liked one from previous years superimposing a bird with an aircraft near heathrow.
While I understand where the feeling here comes from, at the end of the day this competition is the pretty much the world cup of nature photography. It's the absolute cream of wildlife photographers shooting amazing photos and that's naturally going to translate to some exotic creatures in farflung places. And to be fair to the competition, there are often photos of fairly humble species in what is someone else's local patch. Also although it's home is the NHM in London, the travelling exhibition is now a firm fixture in other major museums around the world so it's very much a competition with a global audience.

Something like the British Wildlife Photography Awards is a more relatable and achievable starting point for us mere mortals here in Blighty.
 
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As to the winner. I like it although as always there other photos within the competition that I would have put ahead of it. If I'm underwhelmed by a photo it's the overall youth winner.

If anyone has never been to the exhibition, I recommend it at least once if only for their presentation of backlit duratrans prints.
 
Nice, very nice but, I'd expect more from an image of this apparent calibre. It doesn't make me go 'wow'.

...and the tail going out of frame? :thinking:
 
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...and the tail going out of frame? :thinking:
Hallelujah. I was beginning to think I was the only person who had noticed that!

It's a schoolboy error, isn't it?
 
why is it a school boy error? what would leaving the entire tail in achieve, aside of course from changing the composition
 
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why is it a school boy error? what would leaving the entire tail in achieve, aside of course from changing the composition


That's my view as well. Having the entire tail in would trash the composition. And it's not as if we don't know what a tail looks like.

It's rather akin to taking the top of people's heads off in close up portraits.
 
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