Internationl Conservation Photography Award

Hi everybody,

Just a quick announcement to tell you that I have just won 2nd. place at the International Conservation Photography Awards in the category Wildlife. This competition was founded by photographer Art Wolfe  and all the winning images are now on show at the Burke Museum in Seattle.

My winning image is a photo from Kaziranga in Northern India of a Indian rhino. The Indian rhino has been on the verge of extinction with only about a few hundred left in the wild. Now it is on its way back and around 2500 of them exist today.

Photographing the rhinos of Kaziranga was an amazing experince and you don't really realize just how large these animals really are untill you are very close to them. A fully grown male can weigh between 2,5 - 3 tonnes and as I was photographing this male above I would like to add that my pulse was definetly above average. What an experince that was.

Well check out this link to see the image and the rest of the winners as well.


http://www.icpawards.com/Slideshows/slideshow_wildlife.html

I was also lucky to get my snowy owl from Canada chosen to be a runner up at the Photography Masters Awards in the wildlife category as well so even though the last few months have been very busy with a lot of hard work at the computer there has been some highlights in between ;o)

http://www.icpawards.com/Slideshows/slideshow_wildlife.html

Both photos are off course availiable as limited edition prints, check my website for details

http://www.urigolman.com/golman_images/shop.html

I will be back soon with more on my upcoming trip to Greenland.

I wish you all a great summer with lots of great shots.

Rhino in the Mist - ICP Awards at the Burke Museum

The Burke Museum in Seattle has chosen my image: Rhino in the Mist to promote the upcoming ICP Awards show. The exhibition will open on June the 19th and there will be a great exhibition of the awarded images of this years International Conservation Photography Awards.

I took this image of a lone male Rhino in Kaziranga, India in january 2010 on a misty day. The Indian Rhino is listed as vulnerable with the IUCN and is under great threat from poaching and serious loss of habitat. But fortunatly the numbers in Kaziranga are increasing and now Rhino relocations to other parks such as Manas are taking place. So hopes for the Indian Rhino are fortunatly going the right way.

I remember that when i took this photo i was struck by a real sense of awe. Here i was, just a few meters away from a very large animal, the size of a small car. It had definetly noticed me but was grazing slowly just looking up to check on my location. As it stood there it in the mist, it looked so vulnerable and I just shot a few frames and spent a few seconds enjoying the scene. After that I slowly got up and moved on to leave it to itself in the middle of the tall elephant grass.