Rare Shot of Duck Family Earns Photog Nature Photographer of the Year

Photographer Andreas Geh wasn’t going to enter his photo of a goosander family into any competitions, but friends and fellow photographers insisted. And it’s a good thing they did, because Geh’s photo earned him the title of GDT Nature Photographer of the Year 2016.

The photo was captured at the end of May near Lake Maggiore, Italy. “I had watched a goosander emerging from out of the rocks every morning and taking its young downriver towards the lake,” writes Geh. “They stayed around the mouth of the river during the day and retreated back up the river at night to rest.”

Inspired by the animals’ reliability, he was moved to try and capture, “how the chicks followed their parent with tight bonds like a string of pearls.” So he waited for them one evening, sitting on a bridge that crosses the mouth of the river, camera at the ready.

Thanks to the crystal-clear water, Geh was able to include the reflections of the rocks on the ground into his frame. The resulting shot is unlike anything his colleagues had ever seen before. “My friends at the GDT regional group … insisted that I enter it in the competition,” he remembers. “They had never seen goosanders photographed like that.”

To see more from Andreas, be sure to visit his website.

(via Amateur Photographer)

Image credits: Photograph by Andreas Geh and used with permission.