Landing the winning photograph took detective work, patience, technical planning—and some agility, too
The alley cat
Nayan Khanolkar
INDIA
Winner, Urban
At night, in the Aarey Milk Colony in a suburb of Mumbai bordering Sanjay Gandhi National Park, leopards slip ghost-like through the maze of alleys, looking for food (especially stray dogs). The Warli people living in the area respect the big cats. Despite close encounters and occasional attacks (a particular spate coinciding with the relocation of leopards from other areas into the park), the cats are an accepted part of their lives and their culture, seen in the traditional paintings that decorate the walls of their homes. The leopard is not only the most versatile of the world’s big cats but possibly the most persecuted. With growing human-leopard conflicts elsewhere grabbing the headlines, Nayan was determined to use his pictures to show how things can be different with tolerance and planning. Once he had convinced the Warli people of his plan, they supplied him with valuable information, as well as keeping an eye on his equipment. Positioning his flashes to mimic the alley’s usual lighting and his camera so that a passing cat would not dominate the frame, he finally – after four months – got the shot he wanted. With a fleeting look of enquiry in the direction of the camera click, a leopard went about its business alongside people’s homes. Nayan hopes that those living in Mumbai’s new high-rise developments now impinging on the park will learn from the Warli how to co‑exist with the original inhabitants of the land.
Nikon D7000 + 18–105mm f3.5–5.6 lens at 21mm; 1/20 sec at f7.1; three Nikon flashes; Trailmaster infrared triggers; custom-made housing.
(Nayan Khanolkar)
When American biologist and photographer Tim Laman spotted a young orangutan scaling a 30-m tree in the Indonesian rainforest, he knew the young male was in search of the precious yellow fruit atop the “strangler fig” plant entwining the tree. And he knew he’d be back for more.
So, like the orangutan, Laman climbed the tree, placing his cameras at the top. Then he waited. It took three days of rope climbing and the use of mulitiple GoPro cameras triggered remotely to get the shot.
Both the Borneo and Sumatran species of orangutan are critically endangered, and in a statement published by National Geographic, Laman said he hopes to raise awareness about the destruction of their habitat.
“If we want to preserve a great ape that retains its vast culturally transmitted knowledge of how to survive in the rainforest and the full richness of wild orangutan behaviour,” Laman said, “then we need to protect orangutans now.”
The photograph recently won the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, and together with about 100 other finalist photographs, will be displayed on a world tour that includes Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum this November.