What a shot! Young photographer Bence Mate recently won the BBC Eric Hosking Award for this incredible shot of a pelican snapping up a fish. The award encourages and rewards the talents of young photographers between the ages of 18-26. It is a special award under the Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2011 competition. More than 100 prize-winning photographs from the competition's 17 categories are now on view at Natural History Museum in London until March 11, 2012.
Now here's the story of this amazing shot from the Natural History Museum website:
“From his kitchen table, Bence planned the way he would photograph Dalmatian pelicans. He wanted a water-level perspective of them. So he designed and constructed a catamaran-style floating system, incorporating an underwater camera housing and specially positioned lights and flashes, and set off for Lake Kerkini in northern Greece. ‘It was a huge buzz,' says Bence, ‘to find that the contraption actually worked.' Using cables, Bence took photos from a distance away on a boat, monitoring the scene on a screen and altering the settings with the ever-changing light. The fish-eye lens gave the unusual perspective of the pelican's pouch as it caught a fish thrown back into the lake by a fisherman.”
The Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition
