Holding it together

Professional nature photographer Stefan Christmann likes to immerse himself in a subject. In 2011 he began a 15-month stint at the German Antarctic research station Neumayer III, and in 2017 he returned to the frozen continent to spend a year documenting the lives of emperor penguins for the BBC Series Dynasties. Unsurprisingly, his portfolio impressed the judges in last year’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year (WPOTY) competition. Creating a coherent set of images is challenging, but Stefan believes that much of it comes down to storytelling. ‘A standalone image has a lot of value, but it can always be just one “lucky” shot,’ he says. ‘When you create a portfolio you have to work much more as an artist – nothing is left to chance.’

Working out what kind of story to tell is tricky, even for Stefan. ‘Most of the time aspects of the story change and develop once you start working on an idea,’ he admits. ‘Often, right in the middle of the process you realise that your initial idea doesn’t go far enough and you resolve to tell something more meaningful.’ This is precisely what happened when he embarked on his penguin portfolio.

‘Each day I was connecting more closely with my inner emotions and beginning to understand why the penguins were having such an impact on me,’ he explains. ‘In time I realised I didn’t want to tell a story about survival or the lifecycle; I wanted to tell