2nd Place winner
Stars of the Night
DESCRIPTION
The picture was a real technical and ethological challenge, a product of several years’ preparation, 74 nights spent in a hide, and a lot of experimentation. I shot it manually from fish-eye perspective in less than a meter's distance. As the stars and the birds were not in the same depth of field, a home-made equipment was constructed specially for this purpose. As the herons kept moving during the exposure, they drew interesting forms in front of the starry sky. AUTHOR
BENCE MATE: Wildlife photographer, born in Hungary, 1985. In 2010 he won the prestigious BBC Wildlife Photography of the Year award in London. He is the most effective photographer in the 53-year-old history of the competition, being the only contestant winning the first prize in both the young and adult categories. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildlife_Photographer_of_the_Year#Ranking
In 2005 he experimented the one-way glass photography technique, making fundamental changes in hide photography practice. This technique has been widely used all over the world, and most hides are equipped with such glasses.
Since 2008 he has been designing wildlife photography hides in different parts of the world (Hungary, Costa Rica, Brazil, Norway, South-Africa and Transylvania, Romania). His enterprise operating in Hungary welcomes photographers with the most exclusive hides in the world.
