Spatial ecologist Emma Vogel photographed the biologist Audun Rikardssen while they followed the whales in a fjord in northern Norway.
Emma Vogel
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Emma Vogel
It was in November 2020 in the Norwegian Arctic during the polar night season when the sun never gushed above the horizon. “It’s somehow just this long prolonged twilight,” explains the Spatial ecologist at the University of Tromsø Emma Vogel. “I think it’s one of the most beautiful moments. It will be like a sunset but for hours. Completely unreal.”
Vogel is studying how whales move, behave and interact with peaches to help clarify the conservation and management of coastal communities.
And she has now won Nature Magazine‘s Scientist at work Photography competition for a photo she took for a particular morning. Like most other days, she was in a small boat with her then supervisor Audun Rikardsenautomobile in the fjord.
While they were approaching fishing boats, “sometimes you will start to hear the whales before seeing them,” said Vogel. This includes killer whales, bumps and fins. “If you are in the wind, you certainly feel their breath of fish – not the best.”
During a relative moment of calm between the marking of whales, Vogel took her camera, which she generally uses for the documentation of routine whale, and captured the fascinating scene aboard her small boat.
“In the center of the photo, you see Audun Rikardsen, and he is in this bright yellow survival costume, sitting with the lighthouse, looking right in the distance,” she said. At the top of his head is “his type of signature (which) makes him almost look like an old airline driver.”
Behind him is a large fishing boat – his two lively lights illuminating the crew on the bridge. There are hundreds of rolling seagulls, anticipating imminent fish transport.
“The background is really nice because there are very beautiful snowy mountains,” observes Vogel. And in the distance, between the boat and the mountains, there is a shooting of whales, swimming towards the fishing boat. “I had no idea that the whale was in this one,” said Vogel. “It gives me the feeling of a dreamlike state.”
Rikardsen, who has also won international competitions for his photograph and is a marine scientist at the Arctic University of Tromsø, is delighted that Vogel won. “I hope that I could also have motivated it a bit about photography,” he said. “She has an eye for situations and is a good photographer and I am proud to have obtained this well -deserved prize.”
Croakers, clouds and cosmos
Kate Belleville, environment scientist in California Department of Fish and Wildlife in Redding, follows frogs in the National Forest of Lasen in California.
Ryan Wagner
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Ryan Wagner
The other winning entries were just as striking.
In one, Kate BellevilleAn environment scientist from California Department of Fish and Wildlife, kneels in a forest, smiling with eight tiny frogs in his hands. “This image is special because it documents scientists using medicine to help the populations of fauna affected by infectious diseases”, explains Ryan WagnerThe photographer and student graduated in biology of conservation at the Washington State University Vancouver.
Small frogs had just been placed in an antifungal solution intended to eliminate the Chytride fungus, a deadly killer of amphibian species in the world. Such a remedy could help “stabilize and even reverse the decline in the population”. said Wagner. “This image captures a moment full of hope for the conservation of amphibians.”
Lionel Favre and his colleagues from the Federal Swiss Technology Institute in Lausanne used a ball in Mont Helmos in Greece to better understand the formation of the cloud.
Lionel Favre
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Lionel Favre
In another photo, Michael LonardiAn atmospheric scientist from the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne, squatting on a misty Greek mountain, a weather balloon above the head as it measures the cloud that forms around it. Finding a free moment to take photos is difficult in the middle of a season on the intense field, said Lionel FavreThe photographer and a field assistant in the same institution. But he couldn’t resist. “The atmosphere with the fog was really dramatic and when Michael opened the laptop, his face is (on),” he said. “I grab my camera and I took a photo of this magical moment.”
Favre says that nature is the most realistic laboratory that he and his colleagues must collect the data they need to understand the creation of the cloud and the role played by small aerosol particles. “We are part of the experience ourselves because we somehow see the atmospheric processes revealing before us, observing a cloud forming where there was a blue sky until a few minutes ago,” he explains. “Sometimes it can be exhausting, faced with cold temperatures and long working days to collect what may seem just a bunch of figures, but it is also the challenge that pushes us while trying to understand our planet.”
In eastern Siberia, Hao-Cheng Yu, a geologist, returns to his cabin after having studied mineral deposits in the region.
Jiayi Wang
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Jiayi Wang
And then there is the photo that Jiayi Wanga doctorate in geology. The student at the University of Geosciences in China took last October. Wang and his colleagues were in Siberia to study the gold deposits and why they trained during the Cretaceous.
“To stay warm, we have to fire,” he recalls. “And that’s where I’m just going out to see the sky. And I find:” Wow, what a beautiful night “, and I just capture this image.”
Wang’s photo is mainly the night sky, dripping with stars. The landscape is a silhouette at the bottom with the cabin in the middle. He throws the light of fire into a single human form in the doorway – a single person in the cosmos.
“I met so many geologists – they have to opt for work in the field maybe 10 months a year,” said Wang. “They spend little time with their families.”
Wang’s parents discouraged him to study geology for exactly this reason. “But I always insist on this kind of adult because I like science,” he says.
It is a love that, so far, has provided him with good friendships – and new amazing places to photograph.