FANTASTIC CANON PHOTOGRAPHY
INSPIRATIONS
STUNNING IMAGERY FROM THE WORLD OF CANON PHOTOGRAPHY
© Frank Deschandol / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
01 A TALE OF TWO WASPS
BY FRANK DESCHANDOL
Frank’s original aim was to photograph the vibrant cuckoo wasp (right) as he’d located a suitable sandy bank near his home in Normandy, France. He set up an infrared beam that would fire the shutter when a wasp flew past it and customized his own ultra-fast shutter out of old hard drive parts, so although the exposure was five seconds, the sensor was only exposed to light for a fraction of this. Despite the extremely narrow depth of field and tiny subjects, he captured not only the cuckoo wasp, but also the red-banded sand wasp (left). Though these two species don’t regularly interact, Frank was gifted a perfectly balanced composition by the insects’ flight paths to their nest holes.
Lens Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM
Exposure 5 secs, f/13, ISO160
© Kirsten Luce / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
02 SHOW BUSINESS BY KIRSTEN LUCE
One hand raised signalling the bear to stand, the other holding a rod – the trainer directs the ice-rink show. It’s a shocking sight, not because of the massive bear towering over the woman in her ice-skating outfit, but because of the uneven power dynamic expressed by the posture of the bear and the knowledge that it is not performing by choice. But for the visitors to the travelling Russian circus it’s entertainment. They are ignorant of how the polar bear has been trained and what it might endure. The polar bear is one of four females, reportedly captured in Russia’s Franz Josef Land – property for the Circus on Ice, the only circus known to own polar bears. For Kirsten, who spent years reporting on animal exploitation, this was the most symbolically shocking of all.