Peregrine swoops to photo prize
By Jonathan Amos BBC News science reporter
A swirling image of a peregrine falcon sweeping into a flock of starlings has won Manuel Presti this year's Wildlife Photographer of the Year award.
The Italian caught the action scene, titled Sky Chase, high above a city park in Rome.
"Sky chase is a powerful image and, like it or not, it's one that you will never forget," said Mark Carwardine, one of this year's judges.
The competition has become one of the most prestigious in world photography.
It is organised by BBC Wildlife Magazine and London's Natural History Museum. This year brought 17,000 entries from over 55 countries.
SKY CHASE
Manuel Presti is an engineer by trade, but he has been taking photographs in his spare time for 20 years.
Through his creative images he aims to show the simple beauty in nature and hopes to inspire people to care for its conservation.
Right across Europe, starling populations have been in decline.
Nonetheless, thousands of the birds can be found roosting in city parks in Rome, where it is warmer in winter than the surrounding countryside and usually safer - except for the resident peregrines.
"I was photographing with two cameras; one was with a wide-angle zoom to capture all the shapes, and one - which is this picture - with a long lens to capture the up-close action, the chase," Manuel told the BBC News website.
"The sky was cloudy so I overexposed the image intentionally to make it white. A slow shutter speed - 1/50th of a second - gives it this dynamic of the starlings moving under the psychological pressure of the peregrine diving."
Roz Kidman Cox, a judge and former editor of BBC Wildlife Magazine, said: "The judges were unanimous. It's quite startling and it imprints itself on your mind. It's both a reality and an abstract.
"As a judge, you look for something that is surprising, and this has got it on so many levels."
The image won the Animal Behaviour: Birds category as well as the overall title.
# posted by Unknown : 6:45 PM
