Peter Shen was hiking on a narrow path by Calero Reservoir in San Jose, California, when he spied a female western grebe with 2 chicks on her back. With her dramatic cap of spiky black feathers, saffron yellow beak and bright red eyes, the mother cut a classy figure. The babies were protected in their perch. Grebe chicks leave their floating nests and get on a parent’s back within minutes of hatching.Shen pulled out
his video camera. Resting on the ground at water’s edge, he was at eye level with the household when the grebe’s mate showed up, providing a little silver fish. As the mom held it in her long slim beak, the chicks jumped into a lunch break tug of war, pulling the fish back and forth between them.Shen caught the minute. From the down on
the chicks’ heads and tiny scales on the small fish to reflections on the water’s surface, his photo takes audiences up near to this moment in nature. It made him the Audubon Society’s 2022 Amateur Professional photographer Award.The western grebes and 11 other amazing bird photos and videos will be in Montpelier from Thursday, Jan. 5, to Wednesday, Jan. 18, as Audubon Vermont hosts the 2022 National Audubon Society’s Photography Awards Taking a trip Exhibition at the T.W. Wood Gallery. An opening reception will be held 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 6. The program features award winners and respectable points out from Audubon’s 13th competition.The acclaimed images and videos were picked last summer from almost 10,000 entries from over 2,400 professional photographers.
Entries came from all 50 states and 7 Canadian provinces. Winners were picked by panels of specialist judges whose requirements focused on technical quality, originality and creative benefit. The show is taking a trip to 19 states.” Birds remain in everyone’s lives,”said Kate Ruddle, workplace administrator at the T.W. Wood Gallery, noting that this bird exhibition is specifically welcome in winter season when many of our Vermont birds have moved.”The photos are so lovely and unique. Some catch a bird in an unusual scenario, some are very unique, others are a moment in someone’s back yard.
I love that range and how they are all unexpected. I like the various categories which the photographers are both professional and amateur, “stated Ruddle.These big format photographs, 30 inches by 40 inches, bring audiences close– so close you see the individual barbs of feathers– to birds in nature, leading their lives. In the” Story Behind the Shot”for each one, viewers can read about the process, perseverance and competence that the photographers bring to their subjects.In Jack Zhi’s Grand Prize-winning image, a dad white-tailed kite teaches survival abilities to among his news. Amateur professional photographer Zhi studied kite behavior for three years before he photographed
this magnificent moment in the sky.The daddy bird holds a vole in his talons as he flies, wings out-stretched and tail feathers fanned. As the vole hangs, the teen trainee maneuvers for an air-borne grab of the treat. At the risk
of anthropomorphizing, the dad’s face is definitely darling as the student approaches success.Jayden Preussner won the Youth Award with a wonderful minute with black-bellied whistling-ducks in Indian River County, Florida. As Jayden and a friend viewed, one duck ducked into a hollow in a palm tree.
Its mate twisted nearly upside down to peer into the chasm.The exhibition consists of two brand-new categories: The Female Bird Reward and Video Prize. The Female Bird Prize highlights female birds, who have been underrepresented in bird photography in the face of male birds’ often showier plumage.
The Video Reward acknowledges the dynamic motion and habits of birds.Amateur photographer Alan Krakauer waited in a blind in Fremont County, Wyoming, in snowy predawn hours to see the higher sage-grouse in morning light. He remained in the right location and time as a female grouse with the charming complex plumage of the breed, stopped briefly near him in the middle of snow cleaned sagebrush.The National Audubon Society’s 2023 photography contest opens on Jan. 11, with submissions accepted to March 1. Entries by amateur and professional photographers are welcomed. A youth category is open to participants 13 to 17 years old.At the T.W. Wood, Ruddle kept in mind that a previous exhibition of the Audubon Photography Awards Contest revealed there influenced her and she motivates others to give it a try.”Attempting it made me understand how difficult it is. I attempt to take a photo of a bird and they move, or my lens is too far away, and the bird is tiny. It’s fun to try and see what
‘s involved even if you don’t send out anything in,”Ruddle stated.