GDT European Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2015
Judging panel
Orsolya Haarberg, HU/NO (nature photographer)
A landscape architect by training and originally from Hungary, Orsolya met her partner Erlend Haarberg in Norway in 2004 while studying beavers for a PhD. It was then that she decided to turn her passion for photography into a profession. Since then, she and Erlend have worked as a team based in Norway and specializing in landscape and wildlife photography in the Nordic countries. Together, she and Erlend have published three books: Lapland – the Alaska of Europe, Iceland – land of contrasts and Iceland in all its splendour. Their pictures have been published in magazines including National Geographic, GEO and BBC Wildlife.
In her work, Orsolya looks for the unusual in everyday nature. She chooses to portray animals undisturbed as part of their environment, and looks for the detail or the unexpected moment of light that adds atmosphere, drama or magic to a landscape. She has won prizes in competitions worldwide and has twice been awarded the title Hungarian Nature Photographer of the Year.
Gunther Riehle, DE (nature photographer)
Gunther Riehle, engineer for food technology / nutritional sciences by profession, wildlife nature photographer by passion, with the photography competition virus firmly integrated in his DNA double helix. Successful participation in international competitions all over the world, contest director AC-FOTO German Mega Circuit, organizer of wildlife nature photography workshops, regular judge of nature photography competitions on all inhabited continents of our world, loves the summer, the sun and warmth, but for nature wildlife photography travels mainly to the cold of the Arctic, sub-Antarctic and Antarctic.
Keith Wilson, GB (Founder & Editor, Wild Planet Photo Magazine)
London-based photojournalist Keith Wilson is the founder and editor of Wild Planet Photo Magazine, the world’s first monthly eMagazine devoted entirely to wildlife photography. He is a former award-winning editor of Amateur Photographer and the founder of Outdoor Photography, which he edited from 2000 to 2007. Keith is a much sought after editor of fine art photography books, specialising in wildlife and landscape.
In 2001, he launched Black+White Photography, Europe’s only magazine dedicated to the black & white image. Keith is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and the author of two books on travel photography.
www.wildplanetphotomagazine.com
editor@wildplanetphotomagazine.com
Klaus Tamm, DE (nature photographer)
I’ve been interested in nature since I was a child. I come from a hunting family and as a little boy I was fascinated by the photos of animals in my father’s hunting magazines. Inspired by them, I bought myself an SLR camera with a small telephoto lens as a teenager. In 2005 I started taking nature photography more seriously and it was in that year that I bought my first digital camera.
It has always been my intention to make people more aware of nature through my photography. I aim to create artistic images that encourage the observer to pause for a moment and reflect. My photography excursions have taken me to remote regions of Norway, Sweden, Finland, Bulgaria, Romania and Spain, and also to South Africa, South America and the Falkland Islands.
Michael Lohmann, DE (nature photographer)
Michael always loved travelling and photography. While in the course of years he got to know more and more areas of the world, his fascination with earth's diversity grew constantly, and time and again he felt challenged to reconsider his habits and ideas on life.
It is his greatest interest to explore the diversity and beauty of nature and the environment, and to capture and show "the moment" of all this in an image. It is his fondest wish that this contributes to awareness, appreciation and better treatment of our world as is currently often the case. He also keeps a focus on this aim in his work for the Society of German Nature Photographers (Gesellschaft Deutscher Tierfotografen - GDT), where he became a member in 2006. He has worked with the board of management since 2010 and was elected president in 2013.
In more recent years his photographic activities focused on the polar regions as well as the nature reserves of East Africa, which both have captured him by their vastness and direct experience of nature.