Rich Steel
09-30-2008, 03:58 PM
Hi
As some of you will know from James's thread in the General Photography Section, I recently won the BBC Countryfile Photographic competition so thought I would do a small post about the event as it all became very interesting....suddenly.
BBC Countryfile is an hour long well established TV show that is put out on a Sunday morning and covers issues around farming, the environment and wildlife. For the last three years they have held an annual photography compeition with the final short-list of 12 being published in a calender they sell to raise money for the childrens charity 'Children in Need'. This year I decided to enter as the theme was 'Animals in Action' and I have spent many hours over the last few months photographing brown hares. I thought I would enter some hare photos as they are not a commonly photographed animal due to their shyness but popular being shrouded in rural folklore (you can thank them for your Easter eggs!). They are also associated with farmland which I thought linked in well with the programme. I originally picked out four hare photos to enter including this one unusually running past a patch of daffodils which I thought had March stamped on it. As the saying goes 'mad as a march hare!'.
http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k217/squidfish_2006/hare121.jpg
I had printed off three of the hare photos and suddenly decided to enter the fourth as a bird photo instead. I was trying to think of a bird popular with the public and puffin immediately came to mind. Given the vote of confidence already by the expert eyes here as an IOTW :),
http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...otw#post105318
the choice was made simple and I decided to send them the head on flight shot.
A few weeks passed and in the office I was called one day to be told I had been selected as one of the 12 finalists to appear in the calender and it was the puffin photo that had been selected. BPN 1 point..Rich 0 :)
The selection process appeared on the next weeks TV show and I was amazed to see the number of enteries with prints stacked up in 2ft piles all around the edge of a large room. It was now down to a public telephone vote to pick the overall winner. The week closing date had passed by a couple of days and I had heard nothing so assumed somone else had one.
In the middle of last week, I was at work in a meeting when a film crew and presenter burst through the door with a framed copy of the photo announcing I was the overall winner. This was the start of the surreal day! I got a 50D's (although still not quite decided yet) worth of voucher as the prize. The surprise grew as I stepped out the office to find my partner, some family and my old folks there to meet me. I smelled a bit of a conspiracy. Apprently the BBC had been busy organising things secretly with my family and office. Fortunately as ever I had my camera with me (as always) and was then taken off by the BBC to do some filming on my local patch of coast. The sun shone but the tide was out and so were most of the birds on the estuary mud. Anyway we filmed over...and over...and over...and over. Give me a still camera any day! They finally left late afternoon leaving me with a head in some surreal haze or maybe it was just post traumatic stress. The resulting footage was then shown on the TV last Sunday. Fortunately the light in the office was insufficient to show the shade of red I turned as the burst into the meeting. :o
Overall it was good fun and its nice to see that the big some money that they raise from the charity calender will go to a great cause.
So I would just like to extend a big warm thanks from over the pond to the BPN forum and the generosity and expertise of the staff that make this the Univeristy of Bird Photography.
Cheers
Rich
As some of you will know from James's thread in the General Photography Section, I recently won the BBC Countryfile Photographic competition so thought I would do a small post about the event as it all became very interesting....suddenly.
BBC Countryfile is an hour long well established TV show that is put out on a Sunday morning and covers issues around farming, the environment and wildlife. For the last three years they have held an annual photography compeition with the final short-list of 12 being published in a calender they sell to raise money for the childrens charity 'Children in Need'. This year I decided to enter as the theme was 'Animals in Action' and I have spent many hours over the last few months photographing brown hares. I thought I would enter some hare photos as they are not a commonly photographed animal due to their shyness but popular being shrouded in rural folklore (you can thank them for your Easter eggs!). They are also associated with farmland which I thought linked in well with the programme. I originally picked out four hare photos to enter including this one unusually running past a patch of daffodils which I thought had March stamped on it. As the saying goes 'mad as a march hare!'.
http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k217/squidfish_2006/hare121.jpg
I had printed off three of the hare photos and suddenly decided to enter the fourth as a bird photo instead. I was trying to think of a bird popular with the public and puffin immediately came to mind. Given the vote of confidence already by the expert eyes here as an IOTW :),
http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...otw#post105318
the choice was made simple and I decided to send them the head on flight shot.
A few weeks passed and in the office I was called one day to be told I had been selected as one of the 12 finalists to appear in the calender and it was the puffin photo that had been selected. BPN 1 point..Rich 0 :)
The selection process appeared on the next weeks TV show and I was amazed to see the number of enteries with prints stacked up in 2ft piles all around the edge of a large room. It was now down to a public telephone vote to pick the overall winner. The week closing date had passed by a couple of days and I had heard nothing so assumed somone else had one.
In the middle of last week, I was at work in a meeting when a film crew and presenter burst through the door with a framed copy of the photo announcing I was the overall winner. This was the start of the surreal day! I got a 50D's (although still not quite decided yet) worth of voucher as the prize. The surprise grew as I stepped out the office to find my partner, some family and my old folks there to meet me. I smelled a bit of a conspiracy. Apprently the BBC had been busy organising things secretly with my family and office. Fortunately as ever I had my camera with me (as always) and was then taken off by the BBC to do some filming on my local patch of coast. The sun shone but the tide was out and so were most of the birds on the estuary mud. Anyway we filmed over...and over...and over...and over. Give me a still camera any day! They finally left late afternoon leaving me with a head in some surreal haze or maybe it was just post traumatic stress. The resulting footage was then shown on the TV last Sunday. Fortunately the light in the office was insufficient to show the shade of red I turned as the burst into the meeting. :o
Overall it was good fun and its nice to see that the big some money that they raise from the charity calender will go to a great cause.
So I would just like to extend a big warm thanks from over the pond to the BPN forum and the generosity and expertise of the staff that make this the Univeristy of Bird Photography.
Cheers
Rich