Photo Insight
The story behind the image that won the Black & White category of 2018’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition
The story behind the hummingbird image that won the Black & White category of Wildlife Photographer of the Year
Dutch photographer Jan van der Greef found the inspiration behind his Wildlife Photographer of the Year award-winning image while wandering in the garden of his hotel during a trip to southern Peru. It did, however, take him two days to get the shot, from his wheelchair.
‘I do a lot of work with hummingbirds because for me they represent the ultimate freedom,’ explains Jan. ‘ They can move forwards and backwards and sideways, and upside down. I’m very intrigued by them and their diversity. This one is the Eastern Mountaineer – a species found only in Peru. I had been watching them feeding off the torch lilies then one of them moved behind the flower. My first thought was that I needed to move around so I could see the bird – and of course I did that as well – but then it struck me that as the bird closed its tail for a moment, it formed a beautiful cross shape.
Powerful symbolism
As a university professor, Jan has studied the historic symbolism in the bird’s innocent positioning and it immediately dawned on him that this was the picture he wanted. ‘ The cross has been a powerful symbol through the centuries in many different cultures, and not just by religion. The vertical bar reflects the connection between heaven and earth, and the horizontal bar is the connection between all living creatures in our universe. So it represents the ultimate feeling of oneness with nature. It is very much a sign of hope and trust as well. I think that the world we live in today needs to reconnect with nature – the more disconnected we are, the more we do damage to the natural world that we live in. When you understand your place in the world around you, you see that whatever you do to nature you do to yourself.’
Jan’s hotel was at 2,600m above sea level, and at that altitude hummingbirds have an unusual strategy. ‘When you see hummingbirds up in the Andes,’ he explains, ‘they touch the flowers with their feet. Some of them even hold them. This way they consume less energy because of the lower oxygen levels in the air.’
Using a 500mm lens with a 1.4x extender, to create a focal length of 700mm on his Canon
‘It was such a fleeting moment in time. I was shooting at 14 frames per second and even then there was only one image perfectly framed like this’
EOS-1D X Mark II, Jan had to work quickly to get the shot. ‘It was such a fleeting moment in time,’ he says. ‘I was shooting at 14 frames per second and only one image was perfectly framed like this. In the very next frame the bird’s tail is off to the side of the flower.’
It was late in the afternoon, and using only natural light Jan had to raise his ISO to 4000 and shoot wide open to achieve the high shutter speed required to freeze the bird’s movement. ‘I wanted to have a half backlight, to get a reasonable light on the front of the bird but also to backlight the wings a little.
Although the image was shot in colour, Jan converted it to b& w as he wanted the viewer’s focus to be on the shape. ‘ The hummingbird is a very beautiful bird but in colour its beauty distracts from the message,’ he says. ‘ Turning it black & white seemed to capture the essence of the message better.’
The Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition is at the Natural History Museum, London, until 30 June 2019. Visit www.nhm.ac.uk