PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARD
Neil Aldridge | Flight of the Night Hunter

Name: Neil Aldridge
Picture title: Flight of the Night Hunter
Category: People’s Choice
Nationality: South Africa (Origin), UK (Residence)
Occupation: I work full-time in the charity sector here in the UK, though I have been a professional photographer since 2009. Photography has been a passion in my family for four generations.

Technical information
Camera: Canon 5DS
Lens: Canon 16-35mm f2.8
EXIF: 30s at f14; ISO 500

Cognisys Sabre trigger system; 9x Canon flashes all with red filters. I used red filters on my flashes to avoid disturbing the bats.

Neil Aldridge says:

A lesser horseshoe bat (Rhinolophus hipposideros) takes flight on a starry night, hunting over grassland vegetation on an organic farm in Devon, England.

Intensive agriculture and development have decimated habitats such as meadows and native woodlands, leading to a significant decline in lesser horseshoe bat populations in Britain. To highlight the bat’s connection to this crucial habitat while minimizing disturbance, I used red filters on low-powered flashes for the image exposure.

I positioned the camera and trigger to face upwards along the route the bats typically follow from their roost. The camera was set to f14 with a 30-second exposure to capture both the bat and the starry night sky in intricate detail.

The lesser horseshoe bat was a focal species in the Back from the Brink project, a collaborative conservation initiative aimed at saving England’s most threatened species and habitats. I worked on this project in partnership with The Bat Conservation Trust.