The Winner!
Congratulations to Deborah Martin, the winner of the Canon Online round 1 for 2023. There were 128 entries in
this round.
A bit of history about Deborah:
Feeling honoured and thrilled. Thank you so much!
My photographic journey started in 2016 with a crop sensor Nikon D7100. The natural world is my inspiration, especially the stories told by NZ native birds. My aim is to advocate for NZ native birds through my work. Changing hearts and minds one human at a time, so that my photographs don’t become just a record of a growing list of extinct endemic bird species. I enjoy a range of photographic genres but seem to be most at home with a big zoom lens.
Deborah writes about the winning image:
Tara iti (fairy tern) is a composite image taken using two different camera techniques. Did you know, tara iti are the most endangered indigenous NZ breeding bird? There are only about 9 breeding pairs left in NZ (and the world) and they need all the help they can get from us humans. The tara iti in the photo was the male of the only breeding pair at Pakiri Beach in 2021. This got me reflecting that if something happened to its partner, the loss would be significant. The background for the image was also taken at Pakiri using ICM (intentional camera movement) at sunset. I felt honoured and grateful to be in the presence of such beautiful rare birds and hope this image captures a sense of that wonder as well as their vulnerability.