30 Winning Photos Nature Photographer Of The Year Awards
14. Overall Winner, Birds: “Winter Migration” By Terje Kolaas
“I’m privileged enough to have thousands of pink-footed geese literally in my garden several months a year. More than 80,000 make a stopover here in the Trondheim fjord wetland system on their way between the wintering grounds in Denmark and Netherlands and the breeding grounds in Spitsbergen every spring and autumn and the whole scenario is simply spectacular. I have been photographing them for more than 20 years, and at one point I kind of ran out of ideas and got the feeling that «everything» with geese was already done. So what now?!
Thanks to the amazing drone technology the element of air opened up a few years ago, and the wet dream of photographing the geese as being one of them, a part of the flock, up in the air actually became possible. Dozens of failed attempts during the last years, partly because of fragmented landscapes, disturbing buildings, human artifacts, and messy backgrounds. But during the strange and rare events of blizzards and heavy snowfalls in late April 2020, I realized that the photos of my dreams were within reach; photographing the geese from the air against a pure and clean snowy landscape.
I positioned myself close to a field where I knew that the geese would feed regularly and waited for them there. As soon as I heard incoming geese, I took off with the drone and waited for them in the air. Most of the shots did as always have something imperfect to them; like being too far away, being unbalanced, having a wing or a head cut, or some birds overlapping wrong. But this particular one I`m very happy with. And I`m very happy that the jury of the NPOTY 2021 liked it too!”
“I’m privileged enough to have thousands of pink-footed geese literally in my garden several months a year. More than 80,000 make a stopover here in the Trondheim fjord wetland system on their way between the wintering grounds in Denmark and Netherlands and the breeding grounds in Spitsbergen every spring and autumn and the whole scenario is simply spectacular. I have been photographing them for more than 20 years, and at one point I kind of ran out of ideas and got the feeling that «everything» with geese was already done. So what now?!
Thanks to the amazing drone technology the element of air opened up a few years ago, and the wet dream of photographing the geese as being one of them, a part of the flock, up in the air actually became possible. Dozens of failed attempts during the last years, partly because of fragmented landscapes, disturbing buildings, human artifacts, and messy backgrounds. But during the strange and rare events of blizzards and heavy snowfalls in late April 2020, I realized that the photos of my dreams were within reach; photographing the geese from the air against a pure and clean snowy landscape.
I positioned myself close to a field where I knew that the geese would feed regularly and waited for them there. As soon as I heard incoming geese, I took off with the drone and waited for them in the air. Most of the shots did as always have something imperfect to them; like being too far away, being unbalanced, having a wing or a head cut, or some birds overlapping wrong. But this particular one I`m very happy with. And I`m very happy that the jury of the NPOTY 2021 liked it too!”
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21 February 2023
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