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| © Felix Hug |
| Click photo to see the winning images and honorable mentions. |
Once a professional
basketball
player in
Europe, Felix Hug liked taking pictures while on the road. In 2004 he decided he preferred making travel shots to jump shots, and he "turned pro." For a while, that meant photographing weddings. His big break came when he got a job shooting southern Asia for Silk Air, the regional branch of Singapore Airlines. One destination was Kuching, Borneo, where he made the photo that won this year's nature category.
The picture was taken late in the evening at Bako National Park, one of the few places where it is possible to see the endangered proboscis monkey in the wild. "With wildlife you need good preparation, time, and a longer lens than what I normally use," Hug says. After spending most of one day getting "average" shots of the shy creatures hiding in rain-forest trees, Hug and his production partner, Jamie Boyd, were calling it quits. Then Boyd noticed a few animals in a mangrove swamp. Bending low, Hug shot one of the monkeys with his Nikon D200 and Nikkor 80-200mm f/2.8 lens. Exposure was 1/500 second at f/4.5 and ISO 200.
"Later on, I titled the image 'Ape Man Walking,'" Hug says. For information, go to eyesonAsia.net.
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