Today, I would like to share with you a photograph of the bird behavior category of the 2016 WPY Wildlife Photography Contest, which is a flamingo taken by French photographer Laurent Chagnard in the Camargue Wetland Nature Reserve in France.
You may wonder, aren't flamingos all in Africa, Kenya or South America? How come there are flamingos in France? When most people think of France, their first reaction is the Champs Elysées, and they certainly did not expect to see such wildlife.
In fact, there are many nature reserves and national parks in Europe that are very good, although the overall area and species are still small compared with Africa or the Americas, but its natural ecology is very healthy, and eco-tourism is also very good, after all, there are few people.
Located on the southern coast of France, close to Montpellier (about 80 km) and close to Marseille or Provence (almost 120 km), the Camargue Wetland Nature Reserve is a large wetland marsh reserve where large flamingos can be seen all year round, and it is said that there are almost 20,000 of them.
Flamingo trivia
Flamingos are a very magical bird, on the one hand, they look very elegant, walking, flying, feel like a lady, but they feel very grounded when they eat. Flamingos' main diet includes mollusks, crustaceans, small fish and shrimp, aquatic insects, etc., but they are not like those agile heron waders who directly peck at and catch food in the water, their method is filtering, which is a bit like the difference between baleen whales and toothed whales.
They place the beak in the shallow water, and then swing their heads back and forth as they walk, so that the water in the pond keeps entering their mouths, and then it is filtered, and the food is left in the mouth. So watching them eat is actually quite boring and hard, constantly shaking their heads, sucking in and out.
In fact, this is also the reason why we often say that shooting flamingos can not be close, because their daily feeding requires a long period of repetitive behavior, if they are disturbed all the time, flying around, it will definitely affect their survival. I remember an article a few years ago that said that when sometimes flamingos are disturbed by their transition, they either migrate and fly away, or they lag in maturity or reproduction because of a lack of food.
Picture interpretation
Look at this photo again, when the photographer was photographing a group of flamingos eating in a small pond. The flamingo just lifted its head to take a break, and the photographer captured the moment.
You can see that the entire head and neck of the flamingo are basically mud, and only the part of the beak and eyes of the bird have not been wrapped in mud. So this is a very good portrait of an animal, with a close-up of a telephoto lens, taking a partial head and neck position of the great flamingo, but although it is a close-up portrait, it also introduces the behavior of the flamingo living in the wetlands of the protected area in southern France.
They usually eat in the muddy water of the swamp, so they get a head of mud, no way, they have to eat, regardless of the image. This is very different from the elegant picture of the flamingo that we usually see, so I say that in recent years, the level of the wpy wildlife photography contest has become higher and higher, of course, because more and more people have begun to pay attention to shooting wild animals, and the equipment is getting better and better, so the general flamingo aesthetic photos are more and more beautiful, it is difficult to have a breakthrough to win the award, on the contrary, this kind of portrait photo that can reflect the behavior of the animal, and completely subvert the image of the animal in our minds, it is easy to break through the award or be shortlisted.
Technical parameters
Take a look at his shooting equipment: canon 7d, canon 100-400 f4.5-5.6, let's take a look, this is quasi-professional level equipment, now it is estimated that the second-hand market to buy 10,000 do not want, but it is this set of equipment, filmed to the BBC shortlisted blockbuster.
Again, equipment is not the only one, understanding, respect, attention, and creativity of animals are the keys to a good photo.
Shooting parameters: iso 100, f6.3, 1/1250s. The photographer also knows that the 7d + 100-400 white is actually not very good at the 400 end of the imaging quality, so try to use parameters to make up, such as ISO 100 to make the picture more delicate, f6.3 good aperture choice, 1/1250 seconds can also freeze the moment. Of course, the premise is that the light conditions are more allowable. Overall it's a good film.
Now Jerry Shu Huang is filmed in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, South America, where you can have the opportunity to photograph three different flamingos of Chilean flamingos, Peruvian flamingos and Andean flamingos (in addition to these three, there are three other flamingos in the world, namely the big flamingo, the small flamingo and the American flamingo), look forward to the jerry flamingo works!
By the way, if you want to shoot flamingos, Lake Boglia in Kenya, Lake Natlon in Tanzania, and Walvis Bay in Namibia have the opportunity to photograph large flamingos and small flamingos.
The Great Flamingo of Kenya
If you want to photograph the American Flamingo (Caribbean Flamingo) near Cancun in Mexico and Theerreston are good choices. If you want to shoot Chilean flamingos, there are opportunities in the Chilean Patagonia Plateau and the coast of Chilean Peru, then if you want to shoot Peruvian flamingos and Andean flamingos, you have the opportunity to shoot in the Atacama Desert in Chile or the bolivian highlands.
Chilean flamingo