Name: Charles Janson
Picture title: Curious Guanaco
Category: Mammals
Nationality: United States of America
Occupation: I am a full-time photographer, having retired from my previous employment as a university professor.
Technical information
Camera: Nikon Z8
Lens: Nikon Z 70-200mm f2.8 S
EXIF: f10, 1/320s, 145mm, ISO 500
Accessories: None
HIGHLY COMMENDED CATEGORY MAMMALS
Charles Janson | Curious Guanaco
Name: Charles Janson
Picture title: Curious Guanaco
Category: Mammals
Nationality: United States of America
Occupation: I am a full-time photographer, having retired from my previous employment as a university professor.
Technical information
Camera: Nikon Z8
Lens: Nikon Z 70-200mm f2.8 S
EXIF: f10, 1/320s, 145mm, ISO 500
Accessories: No accessories
Charles Janson says:
It was -20C, so cold that we were engulfed in dense frozen fog. We were driving to find a puma to photograph in a private ranch near Torres del Paine National Park in Chile. I asked our guide to stop at a beautiful vista of the famous Towers (Torres). We got out and I set up to photograph the dramatic spires nestled in frozen fog. When I was just about to take my landscape photo, a guanaco (Lama guanicoe) appeared over the crest of the hill, intruding on my pristine setting.
I waited for a few minutes to see if the animal might leave, but soon another one appeared, and then several more. Making a virtue of necessity, I thought about how the guanacos could complement the landscape. Zooming out to include the foreground, I took a series of pictures as the guanacos approached.
I had owned several llamas (the domesticated descendants of guanacos), so I was familiar with their behavior. I could tell that the animals were not stressed as we stayed still on the road. Indeed, the lead animal showed all the signs of being curious, just like llamas. As it approached, I waited for the moment that it balanced the rest of the scene and took this picture.
As often happens with wildlife photography, the moment was a mixture of preparation and luck (good and bad). The bad luck was that the previous day, I had dropped my main camera and fancy telephoto lens on the road, rendering both of them useless. I was prepared for such an event, with a backup camera body and a mid-range (70-200mm) lens. Unable to take closeup portraits or even detailed behavior images, I started to imagine compositions where the animal was a small part of a wider landscape. Having practiced this enforced perspective for a day, I was better prepared to react to the good luck of guanacos ‘spoiling’ my landscape photo.
Charles Janson
USA
I have been curious about nature for as long as I can remember (my parents said at least) from the age of 4. My first camera was a small cheap plastic Kodak, but I was delighted in taking pictures of life in our garden. Over time, my equipment has become fancier and my destinations more distant, but I still revel in the joy of interacting with the natural world through my camera.
I chose a career of studying the behavior and ecology of animals, mostly primates, as a way of spending as much time in nature as possible while still getting paid to do so! I used photographs to document my study animals and their natural history, but had too little time to develop my photography to the next level. Upon retiring from academia in 2018, I devoted myself fully to improving my wildlife photography, taking advantage of my knowledge of animal behavior.
The most difficult challenge was to transition from technical mastery of the camera to being a creative graphic artist. I could not have succeeded without the mentorship of several outstanding photographers, most recently Tin Man Lee, for whose inspiration and insights I am deeply grateful.