Behind the Scenes: The Story of Wild Delicacy and The Wanderer.

As part of our new blog series GlobopVogue, we will take you behind the scenes to show you what a photographer’s life is like.

To kick off this series, we are going to tell you the story behind the photographs Wild Delicacy and The Wanderer that proves how thin the line separating disastrous failure from massive success is.

These two images taken on June 16th, 2009, are arguably the most famous photographs taken by any of our two photographers to date and have been featured in several renowned international competitions. Wild Delicacy was a finalist in the Veolia Environment Wildlife Photographer of the Year in 2010 and the Wanderer won the Galen Rowell award in the category of landscape in the 8th Annual Competition of Nature Photography Ciutat de Vila-Real.

Following is a brief commentary by Félix Gil de la Casa, the photographer behind both photographs:

“Often, nature photography allows you to get ready for a shot with ample time to think of the best way to capture something or assemble the right equipment for it. For these two photos though, I did not get that luxury at all.

Walking from the Fairy Falls trail parking lot to the hill just south of the Grand Prismatic Spring, my wife and I saw a bison grazing a few hundred yards away to the east. The odds of spotting a bison crossing Grand Prismatic Spring are slim at best, since they tend to stay away from the extremely hot thermal waters, but just in case we accelerated our pace on the off chance the bison decided to move west.

We reached the hill and I started to set up the tripod, with the camera and lense attached, on the loose slope of unstable soil and rock. Suddenly, without notice, the bison showed up behind some trees on its way to the perfect trajectory, right across the southern edge of Grand Prismatic Spring, were a myriad of colorful trickles spill out the excess water from the fountain.

As I turned around to get ready, I realized the tripod had started to fall forward due to the slope. Luckily, I was quick enough to reach my arm, grab the falling equipment and avoid what would have surely been a disaster. There is no way the lense would have survived the fall, and the camera may have been damaged as well, ruining the whole 10-day field trip ahead.

The biggest frustration for a photographer is a destroyed equipment. Terrible feeling. I was tenths of a second away from it. Instead, I proceeded to take two memorable shots that have brought me plenty of joy!”.

Stay tuned for more insight stories at the GlobopStore blog!

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