Photo contest 1997 - winners of the 27th annual photo contest - Illustration

National Wildlife, Dec-Jan, 1997

Ernie volpe and Robert Wong are typical of many National Wildlife readers. Both love nature, and both like to pursue striking images with their cameras. Not long ago, Wong traveled to a remote region of southwestern Africa in search of photographic subjects. Volpe, meanwhile, stayed in the confines of his own backyard. In the end, both men had considerable success capturing nature on film, and both are among the winners of the magazine's twenty-seventh annual photo contest.

In all, readers submitted nearly 3,000 images to the competition. The winners were selected on the basis of original- ity and execution. All were taken with either Fuji or Kodak slide films. Information about how to enter next year's contest is included on the following pages.

Captions: Grand Prize

"I never have to leave home

to photograph birds," says Ernie Volpe, who built a camera blind near some feeders in the backyard of his Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, house. "Sitting there gives me plenty of time to watch urban species that come into the yard." The 41-year-old painting contractor was doing just that late one afternoon when this house finch perched for a split second on the broken window of a shed where Volpe keeps his supply of birdseed. He used a 300mm lens to capture the bird on film.

First Place: Humor

In Montana, these captive 10-week-old coyote pups were busy playing when Jennifer A. Loomis began trying to photograph them, using a 400mm lens mounted on her camera. "Like other youngsters, they never seemed to stop," she says. The 55-year-old children's book writer from Eliot, Maine, took up photography a few years ago after her own kids had grown up and moved away. "I had empty-nest syndrome," she says, "so I started photographing bird nests."

First Place: Plant Life

Now that he is retired from his work as a materials controller in a machine shop, Raymond Coleman says he is always out looking for good images to capture on film. Late one July afternoon, he found this salsify seed growing in a field not far from his home in Detroit, Michigan. Coleman, 68, set up his camera with a 135mm macro lens and bellows directly adjacent to the plant. Then he waited for a thin cloud to pass over the setting sun before tripping the shutter.

First Place: Wildlife

While walking across a bridge in a state park near his Effingham, Illinois, home, Rodney Evans saw a white-tailed doe in the brush below. The 30-year-old computer operator grabbed his camera, but as he moved closer the deer ran away. "That's when I saw her fawn," says Evans. "Apparently the mother was trying to draw me away." Using a 300mm lens, Evans quickly photographed the fawn and then left the immediate area, enabling the mother to return.

First Place: People

Shortly after sunrise, a canoeist wends her way through the mist on Lake Kashagawigamog in Ontario, Canada. Vija Tate captured the action on film with a 60-300mm zoom lens during an outing with her camera club. "One of the members of the club wanted a peaceful moment to herself, so she went out paddling," says Tate, a 44-year-old bank project leader from Scarborough, Ontario. "Luckily, I was there when the sun peeked out through the fog."

First Place: Landscape

"The line that separated the shaded side of this dune from its sunny half was precise," says Robert Wong. "The contrast was so dramatic that it caught my eye from a long way off." At the time, the Rapid City, South Dakota, restaurant owner was out taking a photography workshop along with other travelers in the Namib Desert in southwestern Africa. Wong, 44, mounted his 600mm lens and a 1.4x teleconverter onto his camera to record the striking scene.

Merit

During a trip to Australia, Bill Sherwonit visited a private wildlife sanctuary near the community of Port Douglas. Around midday, he was eating in a small enclosure in the reserve when he noticed that a group of herons was walking across the canvas roof above him. The 47-year-old free-lance writer from Anchorage, Alaska, quickly reached for his camera and captured some of the birds' unusual silhouettes on film using a 50mm lens.

Entry Rules

The editors of National Wildlife invite you to enter their twenty-eighth annual photo contest.

who: The competition is open to all amateur and aspiring professional photographers except employees of the National Wildlife Federation and their immediate families. Your entry to the contest constitutes agreement to allow photographs to be published in National Wildlife as contest winners with limited promotional use. Entrants retain all other rights to future use of their winning photographs. Full-time professional nature photographers (those whose primary income is from nature photography) are asked not to enter this contest.

what: We are looking for striking images of nature, creatures on land and life beneath the water's surface. These images may depict animal behavior or include portraits of wildlife in natural habitat, plant life, natural landscapes and people interacting with nature. Please do not include photographs of pets or domesticated animals. Previously published material may be entered; however, please include information on when and where the photo appeared. Images will be judged on originality, technical excellence, composition, color, action, drama and overall impact.