My first award winning photo

Posted on 2 Dec 2012

This morning I was browsing through my photo archive and this picture attracted my attention. It has a nice story which I want to share with you.

This is a picture from 2003. It was the first year I had a “real” DSLR. My gear at that time was a Canon 10D with a 75-300mm USM lens. A great camera together with not the best lens, but good for me at that time.

For me this was an era of searching and finding out which type of photography I liked the most. I already knew it had to be outdoors, because I love to be out in the field. So in these years I just drove to the National Park Lauwersmeer and captured everything I thought was beautiful. I didn’t mind if it were horses, birds or landscapes.

This picture was shot from a birdhouse at the National Park Lauwersmeer.

On a September evening I stopped by the birdhouse to capture some birds, but as soon as I arrived at the birdhouse they were al gone or to far away.

I looked around a little disappointed, but I stayed at the birdhouse to see what would happen.

Suddenly out of nowhere these horses rushed into my sight. As an instinct I aimed my camera at the horses, closed my eyes and pushed the shutter release button. I didn’t think about setting up the right shutter speed and changing my camera to the Tv mode. Surprised by the moment I just aimed and took some pictures of these running horses.

When the moment was gone I took a quick look at the screen at the back of my camera to see if I actually had captured something of the horses at all…

I could delete most of the pictures right away, but one picture excited me. It made me drive home with a satisfied feeling and a big smile on my face, because I knew this was a special one…

At the end this picture, shot by instinct and with a little luck, appeared to be my first award winning photo and I am still happy with it

Have fun out there!

Ron