Wildlife Photographer of the Year disqualified
Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 10:27AM The winner of the 2009 Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition has been disqualified. Why? The competition organizers have learned that the winning image was a trained wolf and not a wolf in the wild. This is a major deal, and one that tarnishes the reputation of all wildlife photographers. It really frustrates me to see captive wildlife being photographed for competitions, and José Luis Rodríguez should be ashamed of himself for the deceipt.
There is a great writeup about the background of why the wining image was believed to be under suspect circumstances. Here is a link.
Read this article on the subject at BBC News.
Andy Rouse, a wonderful wildlife photographer in his own right, has some very pointed comments here
As you may recall, I have had two winning images in the past few years in the competition. In 2008 I won the Landscape category with my aerial image of the Skeleton Coast off of the Namibian cost of Africa. The recent events really ticks me off, and I hope the photographer goes and crawls into a hole and never comes out. It puts all of us hardworking photographers that have morals into a position where we have to defend our images as people may suspect that they were taken in circumastances that are not so honorable.
Really pisses me off. Way to go, 'winner'. You need a kick in the ass. Big time.
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Reader Comments (3)
I've reserved judgment up until this point. The competition allows captive animals to be entered but they need to declared as such (whether that is ok or not is up for debate, though for 2010 they won't allow captive animals anymore). The continued denial on the part of the "winner" is a disgrace and like you said stuff like this gives all nature photographers a bad name.
I think the judges should be applauded though. They took the allegations seriously without over-reacting and then took the time to carefully examine the evidence, talk to experts, asked questions to the photographer before coming to their decision.
In the end I think that reputation of wildlife photographers will, if anything, be enhanced by the episode. The competition judges have been seen to make a principled stand and this has had international coverage. They played it exactly right.
I went and saw the exhibition in Sydney this week, it was fantastic. It's a shame about the winning image, it's in all the books and merchandise. Goes to show that it doesn't pay to cheat.