Share the wonder
Having spent weeks looking at all of the entries to Close-up Photographer of the Year 03, the same two quotes by author and artist Austin Kleon keep running through my head. The first, ‘The ordinary + extra attention = the extraordinary,’ seems to encapsulate one of the great joys of close-up photography. When you slow down and approach a subject with an air of curiosity then even the most mundane object or scene becomes captivating. This year I’ve been astonished by images of spiders in their rainbow-coloured webs, bottles transformed into seascapes and slime moulds erupting out of dead vegetation.
Of course, there have also been images of subjects or aspects of behaviour that I’ve never seen before: ants working together to hunt a hornet, an octopus seeking shelter in a noble pen shell, mudskippers fighting over territory, to name a few. This brings me to the second quote from Kleon, ‘Step one: wonder at something. Step two: invite others to wonder with you’. There’s enormous joy in discovering something new, and equal pleasure in finding something that makes you want to learn more, but this pleasure seems amplified when you share it with others.
CUPOTY 03 received more than 9,000 entries, shot on cameras, phones and microscopes, making the judges’ task particularly challenging. There were also two new categories: Butterflies & Dragonflies, and Underwater, to add to the seven regular ones: Animals, Insects, Plants & Fungi, Intimate Landscape, Manmade, Micro, and Young CUPOTY (for entrants aged under 18).
To be a close-up photographer you need patience, persistence and a fair
