DIVING NEWS
Big win with a bigfin
Pictures: Cruz Erdmann / NHM (top); David Doubilet / NHM (below).
Fourteen-year-old Cruz Erdmann from New Zealand has won the title of Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2019 with Night Glow, this portrait of an iridescent bigfin reef squid, taken on a night dive in Lembeh Strait, Indonesia.
All the winners of the prestigious Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition are revealed today (16 October) at a ceremony at London’s Natural History Museum (NHM), which develops, produces and exhibits the international competition. This year the event attracted 48,000 entries from 100 countries.
Erdmann was a certified diver at 10 and, after inheriting his father’s old underwater camera, “found the perfect medium to express his passion for all things aquatic”, says the NHM. On a group night-dive he had been asked to hold back to allow slower swimmers a chance to capture images, and found himself over a 3m-deep sand flat.
There he found a pair of courting squid giving a fast-changing colour display of lines, spots and stripes. One of the squid, probably the female, shot away but the other lingered long enough to allow one photograph. Erdmann used a Canon EOS 5D Mark III with 100mm f2.8 lens set at 1/125th sec at f29, ISO 200, and an Ikelite DS161 strobe.
“To dive in the pitch dark, find this beautiful squid and to be able to photograph it so elegantly, to reveal its wonderful shapes and colours, takes so much skill,” said Theo Bosboom, one of the judging panel. “What a resounding achievement for such a young photographer.”
The image was selected from among 19 category winners, professional and amateur, chosen for their originality, creativity and technical excellence. Winner of the Underwater category was The Garden of Eels by rather better-known photographer David Doubilet from the USA.
16 October 2019
Garden eels, which vanish into their burrows the instant they sense unusual movement, had featured in the first of Doubilet’s many stories for National Geographic. However, an eel colony off Dauin in the Philippines proved to be one of the biggest he had ever seen, stretching down a steep, sandy slope.
A Nikon D3 with 17-35mm f2.8 lens at 19mm in a Seacam housing, with Sea & Sea YS250 strobes set at half power, was placed in the colony while Doubilet observed the scene from behind a shipwreck. From there he could trigger the system remotely, using a 12m extension cord.
It took several days to perfect the set-up and obtain satisfactory images, but Doubilet had his shot when a small wrasse led a cornetfish through the swaying eels. It was taken at 1/40th sec at f14, ISO 400.
These two and 98 other winning images go on display at the museum on 18 October until the end of May, and will later be sent on a UK and international tour.
The next competition is open for entries between 21 October and 12 December.
