Rightio, so every year I go along to the Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year finalist exhibition at the SA Museum and think “fuck, how cool would it be to get a finalist?” And most years I enter a few pics with hopeless optimism and get the ‘tough titties your photos are shitty’ email reply. And that’s OK. These competitions suck anyway. You know, unless you actually get a finalist. Then they suck a lot less.

Up until now, the only comp I’ve ever had any luck in was the 2022 Pollinator Photo Competition. And look, I’m not saying that accolade, and the Burt’s Bees gift basket I got as a prize, wasn’t cool, it was, but it wasn’t exactly the level I was dreaming of.

My Pollinator Photo Comp Finalist… it’s a Blue Banded Bee.

And actually, this year, when I saw the Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year comp was on again, I was like “yeah, nah, I’m not even going to bother”. But when a friend have me a bit of a last minute nudge I changed my mind and entered a few pics thinking nothing would ever come of it like usual. Well bugger me if I didn’t get The Email. Not the “You’re shit” one but the “You’re not completely shit” one.

In case you’re wondering, this is how it works: They email you to say “You’re a finalist… maybe”. And the ‘maybe’ bit is because there’s all sorts of rules about what you can and can’t do to your raw, untouched, original pic. For example, you can crop it, do basic colour correction, make it a bit lighter or clean it up with some noise reduction. But you can’t photoshop branches out, or change anything ‘too much’. But it’s not 100% clear how much is too much. So you submit your original ‘RAW’ image and hope for the best.

While I was waiting for the verdict, part of me was like “fuck, I should have done a bit more to make it look nicer”. And the other part of me was shitting my pants thinking “What if they disqualify me and I don’t end up being a finalist? I’d be the Lance Armstrong of Nature Photography”. But minus the lycra and plus a testicle.

At this point, it’s probably also worth mentioning that after they send you that first email you spend most of your time scratching your head saying “How the fuck? What the fuck?” I mean, you enter your pics because you think they’re good, but you never really know if they’re good enough. And in my case, if I’m being really honest, although I personally love this pic, I don’t even think it was the best pic that I entered this year.

But that’s the thing about competitions sometimes.

If it’s a running race, you either cross the line first or you don’t. If it’s a fishing comp, you either catch the biggest fish or you don’t. But if it’s something creative, who the fuck knows what the judges are looking for that particular year? Maybe one of the judges got attacked by a bird as a child and now fucking hates birds and even if you took a pic of a bird, juggling chainsaws while balancing on a beach ball, your chances of making finalist are four fifths of fuck all. So it’s always a bit of a lottery to be perfectly honest.

Don’t get me wrong, when you see some of the finalists you’re like “sweet baby Jesus that is next level ridiculous incredible how the fuck did they even get that shot?!?!?!” and it wouldn’t matter if the judge was Helen Keller, they’d be able to see how incredible the pic was.

You can see the rest of the finalists here and you’ll see what I mean.

As a Creative Director though, it’s literally my job to step back and evaluate creative every. single. day. And I can say with confidence that while my pic is lovely, it’s simply not in the same league as some of the other finalists. Stoked to be in amongst such great pics, literally did a happy dance when I found out, gonna milk being a finalist for all it’s worth, but realistic about my chances of actually winning, (which are zero, by the way), and don’t even care. Maybe I set my sights too low, but am just genuinely fucking stoked to be a part of it all.

And if you want a bit of behind the scenes info about the pic, here goes… (including some pics and vids that I found from the actual day!)

First stop at Arid Lands Botanic Gardens is either a) the cafe for a quandong smoothie (highly recommend) or b) the bird hide.

This particular day I skipped the smoothie and hit the hide. And these pics fairly accurately demonstrate the various stages of bird watching on most days, including that one. Sure, hides are sort of cheating, but they’re also warm and dry so I think we can all agree it’s a valid life choice.

When the White-winged fairywrens didn’t get the memo to turn up so I could get some shots while sitting on my fat arse in comfort, I went looking for those bastards dressed as a shrub.

I eventually tracked a few down and got a series of totally shit pics that would fit in real well on Crap Bird Photography Group on Facebook. Like the vast majority of the shots I take.

Sometimes when I’m out shooting birds it’s not unusual for me to take literally 100s or even 1000s of shots, to jag just one or two OK ones. When I went to check my original files from the day, I was fully expecting that to be the case. 500… 600… more maybe. In fact, I panicked when I only found… 84 shots. And then I sort of remembered. The light was a bit shit. It was windy as fuck. The birds were being arseholes. So I just didn’t shoot many frames at all, the ones I did were from miles away, and not surprisingly most of them were rubbish.

In fact, even from this sequence of three shots below, you can (sort of) see the first shot the bird is out of focus and the bushes just behind it are nice and sharp. The third shot the bird is like “fuck this, I’m outta here”. And it’s only the one, single frame in the middle that is any good, and boom! That’s the one I entered. (You can also see just how small the bird is in the frame, and for those of you who give a shit about such things, this was shot at 1,200mm – a 600m lense with a 2 x teleconverter – which is a loooong lens.)

Later that evening I actually found two pics that weren’t too bad. One which I kept quite small in the frame, and one which I cropped in to and shows a bit more detail… both of which will soon be available for sale here along with some of my other less shit pics.

Which brings me to the final shot. And look, I don’t mind admitting this… the final shot you can buy is a teeny little bit… fudged. I mean, it’s close to the original, but quite often I like to give my pics a bit of touch up to try and visually represent what I saw, and felt, on the day. Keeping in mind when you’re there on the day, you have a full, 360degree view of things. All your sense are engaged. Oh God, this sounds wanky, doesn’t it? But it’s true. You can see the sky and feel the wind, and see the sun setting off in the distance, you can see it all. But your photo, it’s just one moment in time, and just one part of what you are actually taking in. Which is my way of justifying that sometimes, you take things that aren’t in the frame, and kind of, well, you know, put them there. In this instance, the light sown in the frame was a bit flat, and nothing at all like what I was seeing, so I made that more obvious in the final image. I didn’t enter it this way, even though it’s way more beautiful, because of all those pesky rules, but it’s the image I choose to share with you.

There ya go. A bit of info from behind the scenes about that day, and that particular pic.

As always, if you have any questions or comments, feel free to email me any time and I’ll do my best to get back to you. Probably.

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