Name: William Burrard-Lucas
Picture title: Black leopard
Category: Animal portraits
Nationality: UK
Occupation: Wildlife Photographer and founder of Camtraptions
Technical information
Camera: Canon 1DIV
Lens: 17-40mm F4
EXIF: ISO:1600 – F5.6 – 1/30
Accessories: Camtraptions PIR Motion Sensor, Camtraptions camera housing, Camtraptions flashes x 3
WINNER CATEGORY ANIMAL PORTRETS
William Burrard-Lucas | Black leopard
Name: William Burrard-Lucas
Picture title: Black Leopard
Category: Animal portraits
Nationality: UK
Occupation: Wildlife Photographer and founder of Camtraptions
Technical information
Camera: Canon 1DIV
Lens: 17-40mm F4
EXIF: ISO:1600 – F5.6 – 1/30
Accessories: Camtraptions PIR Motion Sensor, Camtraptions camera housing, Camtraptions flashes x 3
William Burrard-Lucas says:
Black panthers have fascinated me since childhood and it had always been my dream to photograph one in Africa – but they are so rare and elusive that I never expected to achieve it. Then I heard about a melanistic leopard that had been seen in Kenya’s Laikipia County and I knew this could be the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity I had been waiting for. In early 2019, I spoke to the people who had seen the leopard and with their help I selected locations for my camera traps. For me, the ultimate photo would show the black leopard under the stars in a single exposure. It took several months of perseverance and many near misses before I achieved this image. For the image to work, many elements needed to come together. Firstly, it had to be a cloudless night which wasn’t common at this time of year. The only way to expose the dim stars was to use a long exposure time and therefore there could be no moon which would otherwise cause ghosting. And of course, the leopard himself had to appear.
More detail can be found here if you need it:
https://blog.burrard-lucas.com/2019/02/black-leopard-in-africa/
https://blog.burrard-lucas.com/2021/03/starlit-black-leopard/
About William Burrard-Lucas:
UK
Will Burrard-Lucas is a wildlife photographer from the UK.
He often prefers to get close and use a wide-angle lens to capture a more intimate perspective. To achieve this with African wildlife, in 2009 he created BeetleCam, a remote-control camera buggy. This is a tool that he continues to use in his work today.
Will has also developed a range of high-quality camera trap equipment for photographing elusive and nocturnal wildlife. In 2014, he founded Camtraptions Ltd to turn his creations for camera trap photography into products for photographers and filmmakers around the world.
In 2017, Will embarked on a new project titled “Land of Giants”. The aim of this project was to document the last of Africa’s iconic elephants with tusks reaching down to the ground, in collaboration with the Tsavo Trust. In 2019, “Land of Giants” was released as a coffee table book.
In 2019 his rare photographs of a wild black leopard in Africa made headlines around the world. Thereafter he returned to the black leopard’s territory and worked for more than six months to capture the ultimate photograph of the animal under a starry night sky. This quest is chronicled in his new book, The Black Leopard, published in March 2021.