2011: Behaviour: All Other Animals - Highly Commended
Cyril Ruoso (France)
Cold embrace
Cyril couldn't believe his ears. Some 2,000 metres (6,500 feet) up in the French Alps, beside a lake covered with ice, he could hear a frog chorus. They were singing away, presumably in the gap of air between the ice and the water. Ten days later, the ice began to melt, and the first choristers appeared. Cyril says, 'The males jump on anything that moves - even on my equipment,' holding on with the aid of the dark nuptial pads on their thumbs. Here, one male is holding onto another as they both wait for a female to show up. Cyril positioned his hide on the bank and carefully set up his camera and split-level lens half in the water, together with both underwater and above-water flashes and a cable linking the camera to his monitor. 'I wanted to portray everything about this extraordinary habitat - the mountains, the ice, the water and the cold - and create a shot which would show that even the most common species is extraordinary.'
Canon EOS 5D + Sigma 14mm f2.8 HSM lens; 1/160 sec at f20; ISO 200; custom-made housing; Inon D2000 S + Canon 580EXII + Nikon SB-24 strobes; hide.
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Adult awards Ant rider Bence Máté
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