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~ Selections from Tim Bird's travel photography archives

Six Images

Tag Archives: TPOTY

Six Picks: The Migrating Monarchs of Mexico

13 Saturday Dec 2014

Posted by Tim Bird in Uncategorized

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Angangueo, butterflies, El Rosario, environment, insects, Mexico, Michoacan, migration, Monarch butterflies, TPOTY, Travel Photographer of the Year, travel photography

Six images in a photo blog taken from my travel photography archives: visit www.timbirdphotography.com to see more of my pictures.

Last week the Travel Photographer of the Year competition announced its results for 2014 and I was delighted to get a picture Commended in the Wild & Vibrant single image category. I’ve been Highly Commended in the past, I won their 10th anniversary celebration competition last year, and I have been a finalist in previous years as well as this one. Thousands of entries are received from over 100 countries so I regard it as a definite compliment to be recognized in any way. The competition has become as much a part of my annual calendar as Christmas, along with the exhibition at the Royal Geographical Society in Kensington, London, that displays the winners and which takes place next year from July 24 to September 5. There’s a link to the winners’ gallery at the bottom of this page.

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My commended picture, above, shows an early morning scene from the forests in the mountains close to the town of Angangueo in Michoacan, Mexico. The forests are protected to some extent against logging and wayward tourism as part of the El Rosario Butterfly Biosphere Reserve. Every year in the North American winter millions of Monarch butterflies make the long flight south – over 2,000 kilometres – to these same few hills to spend the winter.

When I made the climb up into the forest one early March morning in 2009, the first visitor of the day, the sun was still rising and the butterflies were resting in vast clusters in the treetops. In fact, it took my eyes some time to adjust to the fact that these were not leaves but an enormous congregation of insects. When the sun began to rise, the wings of the butterflies began to open in the warmth and after an hour or two the sky was alive with a softly fluttering orange cloud.

It is one of the most extraordinary, beautiful and spectacular phenomena in the natural world, made even more remarkable by the fact that the butterflies that return north to the United States and Canada from migration will not return to spend another winter here – in other words, the insects are somehow instinctively programmed to make their way to the same hills and forests.

A Mexican translator friend who helped me to arrange my visit tells me that the area is now more dangerous to get to because of the rising drug cartel-related and other violence that is sadly part of Mexico’s everyday life, so my visit was well timed. Happily the butterflies are immune to this particular kind of inane human activity, although not to environmental human damage.

It’s nice to be able to draw attention to a positive story from Mexico, a beautiful and exciting country with a vibrant culture. Perhaps my Commended picture and the others you can see here will serve as a small reminder of the country’s happier attractions.

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Butterflies gather in thick orange mats in streams and springs.

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The butterflies will land on your hands and clothing but you shouldn’t actively pick them up or you can damage the delicate wings.

butterflies-4353  butterflies-4241 butterflies-4120

In my next issue of Six Picks I plan to show you some of the images that were shortlisted for the TPOTY competition but didn’t quite make the winner list – watch this space!

TPOTY winners this year: http://www.tpoty.com/winners/2014

Congratulations to all the winners – these are some of the world’s top travel shooters and to get even close to their company is an honour and pleasure – and encouraging too.

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Six Picks: Finalists and winners

13 Sunday Jul 2014

Posted by Tim Bird in Uncategorized

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Blue Wings, competitions, final, finland, helsinki, India, Kensington, London, Royal Geographical Society, Taj Mahal, Thailand, Timothy Allen, TPOTY, Travel Photographer of the Year, travel photography, triumph, Udaipur, Vappu, World Cup Final

Six images in a weekly photo blog from my constantly expanding archives at www.timbirdphotography.com and bulging hard drives.

It’s World Cup Final day, and this week I’m taking the opportunity to recall some of my own photographic triumphs and near-misses.

Last week I was in London for the opening of the Travel Photographer of the Year 2013 competition exhibition at the Royal Geographical Society in Kensington. The creator of the competition, Chris Coe, and his wife Karen have developed this contest to be among the world’s top showcases for travel photography, encouraging amateurs as well as professionals to enter their work and giving a boost to young aspiring enthusiasts. I’ve entered the competition every year for at least seven of the ten competitions judged so far – number 11 is open for entries right now until October 1 – and I’ve had varying degrees of success. I’ve entered again this year, so keep your fingers crossed.

I like entering competitions, partly as a way of increasing my confidence as a photographer and partly to match myself against other photographers. You can always learn something new in photography and you can do that by seeing what other people are doing. Being able to tag “Award Winning” to my description also helps to convince editors that I can shoot as well as write, not something that everyone can do. At the TPOTY opening I had another chance to meet and compare notes with photographers from all over the world. The deserving overall winner this year was Timothy Allen (bad move on my part, this – now I’ve linked you up to his page, you’ll probably never come back to mine!), an intrepid and talented photographer whose professional credits include the stills for the BBC TV series Human Planet.

So in this week’s Six Picks forgive me if I take the opportunity to indulge in some celebration of some of the prizes I have won in recent years.

prizes7

Planet Ant, a highly commended entry from the Digital Photographer of the Year competition a few years back. Taken in Koh Chang in Thailand in 2009

prizes8

The Travel Photographer of the Year competition celebrated its tenth anniversary last year with a separate “10 for 10” contest. My Splash of Colour shot won the overall prize and it’s on show at the exhibition in Kensington until August 17 (see below). It was shot in Udaipur in India in 2013. I won a handy and versatile Fujifilm X20 compact camera for this one.

prizes10

May Day (Vappu) band in Helsinki. This shot earned me a Highly Commended in the TPOTY competition, single image Festivals category, in 2006.

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A young cricketer in Agra, India, with the Taj Mahal looming through the mist. This won the Famous Places category in the AA Holiday Photographer of the Year 2008 – and earned me a cruise for two in the Canary Islands.

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Buddhist monk novices in Bodh Gaya, Bihar, India, the site of the original Tree of Enlightenment. This was one of four images published in the Finnair inflight magazine Blue Wings that earned me the title of British Guild of Travel Writers Photographer of the Year for 2012 – and a commission to shoot for the Sarawak Tourist Board in Borneo.

prizes11

Ghost ship to Stockholm: third prize in the Finnish Readers’ Digest / Matkaopas magazine / Kamera magazine Travel Photographer 2009 competition. Taken on the island of Suomenlinna in Helsinki with the help of the Silja Line ferry. The prize for this was a Canon Powershot camera.

If you are in London, drop in to the TPOTY exhibition at the Royal Geographical Society in Kensington. It’s free of charge and runs until August 17. Many of the pictures are displayed outside in the courtyard, with the pervading and exotic perfume of jasmine flowers lending an appropriate sense of far-off places. The exhibition shop includes postcards, prints and posters from the competition Collection, soon to include another of my own short-listed entries, as well as the Journey series of compilations of previous competitions. The shot from Udaipur above is included in the latest volume, Journey Six.

Please feel free to share this weekly photo blog and to follow future issues. But please request permission before re-using this photos in any other context, including commercially – copyright remains with the photographer, that is, me, Tim Bird.

You’ll find more of my photos at www.timbirdphotography.com.

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