GDT Nature Photographer of the Year 2019
Overall Winner: Klaus Tamm - Nuisance
"In Spring 2017 my friend Hermann Hirsch lured me to Romberg Park in Dortmund, where he had discovered a large number of mice at different locations. The park gets a lot of visitors, who would often scatter birdfeed in the winter months. In the evening hours, this supply of food regularly attracted many yellow-collared mice. All we had to do was capture the lively animals with our cameras. A flash unit brought light into the darkness. The light source was placed behind the feeding place to highlight our leading characters from behind. Because the mice were difficult to spot in the darkness, it took many tries to come away with some good images. We visited these wonderful creatures for several days in a row. One evening a mosquito joined one of the mice, obviously intending to tap it for dinner. It was a blessing for the composition but a nuisance for the mouse."Since his teenage years, when Klaus Tamm first got his hands on a reflex camera, he has made it his cause to raise people's awareness for nature. Creating artistic images that make the viewer pause and look is his intention. His photography travels have led him to remote places in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Bulgaria, Romania and Spain, but also to South Africa, South America and the Falkland Islands.
Klaus Tamm's images have been awarded many times in international nature photography competitions, among others Wildlife Photographer of the Year and European Wildlife Photographer of the Year.
www.tamm-photography.com
Category 1: Birds
Category 2: Mammals
Category 3: Other Animals
Category 4: Plants and Fungi
Category 5: Landscapes
Category 6: Nature's Studio
SPECIAL CATEGORY: ACTION
Some in the GDT may have the impression that the classic action photo has come a little under the taste of the time. At times, it seems that the ability to capture photographically charged, dynamic moments is no longer in demand. We wanted to counter this impression with this year's special category "action".
This category was intended for pictures in which the photographer has caught the decisive moment of a movement, imposing a single short part of a sequence of movements or dedicating himself to the movement itself. Movements could be both sharp and blurred or both variants could be united in one image. Here, the entire spectrum of behavior of animals could be taken up and show both individuals or groups.
Prize of the Jury
Price of the Jury | Sarah Böhm I Rakete
Thank you
We'd like to thank our sponsor AC-Foto for providing valuable prizes for the winners of this contest!
We'd also like to thank our premium sponsor Olympus Europe for providing the prize for the overall winner of this contest!
Jury 2019
Gisela Schmid
Gisela Schmid is a veterinarian and animal osteopath. As a nature photographer she initially dealt mainly with travel photography. In recent years, she has also dealt with alternative and spiritual issues that have enriched her life, but also her perspective in photography.She does not always have to travel far, on the contrary. She loves to discover the hidden beauty of small, at first glance inconspicuous, things with the macro lens in her own garden. By playing with light and sharpness, colors and shapes and seeing with the heart, she wants to make the essence of the motif tangible to the viewer and thus touch him in his own being.
www.natursucher.de
Carsten Braun
Carsten Braun, born in Idar-Oberstein in 1974, spent a lot of time with his parents in nature as a child. At the age of fifteen, he took his first photo shoot of Novoflex and accompanied his father on his photo tours. After completing a biology degree, he now works as a certified biologist.
The nature in his home region inspires him in his photographic beginnings, since he was able to work intensively on photo projects in the near environment of his home country for years. Especially the short-term photography of flying bats is devoted to him with great interest over many years. Photography trips and the various animals and landscapes in distant lands have been provoking him more and more in recent years.
www.braun-naturfoto.de
www.facebook.com/CarstenBraunPhotography
Jan Leßmann
Smell forest, listen to the tapping of woodpeckers, perceive the sound of the waves. Be amazed by anemones and admire the fresh green of the birches. Enjoy autumn colors, listen to the deer while listening to the pipes. Impressions that Jan Leßmann experiences in his personal environment and that make him pause. He sinks in small details, gets carried away by the endless expanse of a sandy beach and loses himself in color gradients, abstract structures and contrasts. With the camera, he not only wants to create an image of his surroundings, but also wants to use nature as a model to give a creative idea a foundation.
Jan Leßmann currently lives in Greifswald and studies landscape ecology and nature conservation. He is interested in all kinds of art, likes to think outside the box, he is easy to get excited and spends most of his time in forests, lakes and the sea.
