May 24, 2025 • 30 mins
Newt talks with Tom Sullam, co-founder of the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards, about a unique photography contest that captures humorous moments of animals in their natural habitats. The awards aim to promote wildlife conservation and sustainable living through humor, encouraging empathy and engagement with biodiversity preservation. Tom shares his journey from corporate work to wildlife photography, sparked by a move to Tanzania, and highlights the importance of small steps in conservation efforts. The CWPA contest is free to enter, invites photographers worldwide to submit their funny wildlife images, with categories for different types of animals and a special focus on youth participation. The awards have gained global attention, with exhibitions showcasing the images and supporting conservation charities. Tom emphasizes the accessibility of wildlife photography, encouraging patience and creativity, and notes the role of humor in fostering a positive connection with nature.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
On this episode of Newts World. As someone who loves
animals and particularly seeing animals in their natural habitat, I
am delighted to introduce my guest Tom Sullom. He is
the co founder of the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards along
with Paul Joynson Hicks, which is a unique photography contest
capturing the amazing and funny things animals do in their
(00:28):
natural environment. Their mission is quote through the Comedy Wildlife
Photography Awards, we aimed a widened understanding and engagement of
a sustainable world and wildlife conservation, specifically for the preservation
of biodiversity and the health and enrichment of everyone on Earth.
That's quite a story as to how this contest came
into being, so I really pleased Tom will join me
(00:49):
to talk about their upcoming contest with entries due by
June thirtieth. Tom, welcome and thank you for joining me
on NEWTS World.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Thanks very much for having me. It's an honor.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Your bio says that your journey to becoming a photographer
wasn't exactly direct psychology degree corporate jobs photography. Did you
always want to be a photographer or was it just
a hobby that eventually led you to a career.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
It was a hobby and I can't even say that
I was one of those guys that was given a
box brown near the age of four and taught by
my great grandfather.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
That didn't happen.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
I followed my nose, my commercial nose, I guess, went
into the city in London, and I thought I should
really be focusing on just making as much money as
I could. That seemed to be my eighteen year old brain,
and I think it was about thirteen years I realized
there were other things that I was also interested in,
and the photography. It's quite a bold move, but it
(01:55):
was if you can be commercial about something creative like
photographer or any kind of art, you can make a living,
not the same kind of living as you'd make in
the city. And so I started doing the more creative
thing of photography. And then my wife was offered a
job in North Africa. In Tanzania, where we moved in
twenty thirteen, is a family with two young kids, and
(02:18):
that's when I started teaching myself wildlife photography.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Before we get to our life photography, I've visited Tanzania briefly.
What was it like living there.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
I would go back there in a heartbeat. You know,
when you go there you're filled with anxiety.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
You know.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
We come from a middle class part of London. You
hear and read the scary things and you tend to
remember them rather than the positive things, except for great
words that carry all away, like Serengetti and Kilimanjaro. Those
things obviously appealed. But once we arrived and found our house,
Tanzanians are the most lovely nation of people I've ever met.
(02:55):
It's an egalitarian way of living. I think that harks
back to their the sort of communist leader they had
in the sixties. Things have changed there quite a lot,
by the people have remained very egalitarian. They love European
kids or Western World kids. So there's a lot of
talk of danger and risk, and you mustn't know. If
you walk around with a giant Rolex and your iPad
(03:17):
under your arm, you may ask for trouble. But that
would happen anywhere. But actually in Tanzanier we found us
it was very safe. You can take precautions, but in fact,
I've never felt safer in any place that I've lived,
and I lived in about four or five different countries,
So it was amazing.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
It was an amazing place that I would go back.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Tell us about how you came up with us, because
we do want our listeners to have a chance to
actually participate if they want to the idea of the
Nikon Comedy Wildlife Award where did it come from?
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Right at the beginning, Paul Johnson Hicks, who came up
with this with me, was photographing a Vero's eagle owl,
which is a very impressive eagle owl, somewhere in Tanzania.
He lives in Tanzanier. Balled us and the eagle turned
away from him and looked back at him between its legs,
and he took the shot. So he's got two legs
(04:09):
with eyes looking at him from between the legs, and
he showed it to me and I sort of chuckled,
and I said, that's great. I guess there's no use
for this type of picture, and he said, no, there
is no resource where I could put a picture like this.
It has to be elegant and splendid and look like
a sort of king of the trees. And then together
in that conversation we said, it's a shame. We should
think of something where you could upload these real life
(04:32):
images of wildlife that are excellentally photographed, and that was
the crux of the beginning of the competition. And then
both of us, being commercially minded, if I'm being very honest,
we thought, well, how do we get this to work?
And we said, well, actually, we could use the humor
of this image and of other if there are other
(04:52):
images like this to appeal to people's empathetic nature, and
so we can launch the competition and we will talk
about how the comedy images will also create a sort
of a movement towards understanding conservation and the state of
wildlife at the moment. So we realized there was the
seriousness of comedy. Effectively, is that you've got. We did
(05:14):
a bit of research and there's a lot that's been written,
a lot of research has been done on how humor
can get people to see things in a different light.
And the main example we came across time and time
again was if I show you pictures of a rhino
that's been shot or killed and has this horn sawn off,
or an elephant that's been shot, one can tend to
(05:35):
be put off by that. You feel stressed, you feel
a bit guilty, possibly to the point where often you
might just go, oh, I don't want to see that,
you know, I like elephants.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
I don't want to see the dead ones.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
And you don't necessarily take action or feel a need
to do anything because you want to ignore it. Whereas
if you then see a humorous image of let's say,
an elephant, and this is based on research. This is
not something that I or Paul knew were not particularly
smart people, but it was more and what we read
the humor creates an empathy immediately and a link with
(06:05):
the animal you've just seen, and that empathy may lead
to nothing, but often it leads to a positive reaction
towards the animal or wildlife as it is. And so
we paired the two together. We had this picture that
Paul didn't know where to put, and then we had
this idea that actually humor might work and get people
(06:25):
enervated and energized towards maybe doing something positive. And thirdly,
given the state of Paul and I, you know, were photographers,
we're not kind of wildly working every hour that God's
given us, we thought, actually this is quite nice, because
people can do little things. The small step is better
than no step. And so that was the sort of
(06:47):
third point of the triangle for us, is that you've
seen this funny image, you might have one that you
can enter into the competition. And for people who are
seeing the competition, they might feel this empathy that I've
talked about and they can take little baby steps. Most
of us are not one hundred percent pure. We all fly,
(07:07):
we all drive, we all make use of the incredible
things that man has come up with. But there is
also something that we can all do that we never do.
And even if it's getting little flower pots on your windowsill,
that's going to save a few bees. And I know
that sounds slightly trivial and minor, but if that's the
best you can do, then that's better than nothing. And
(07:29):
so we've pushed the competition on the back of this.
The world's too big and too worrying, and the news
is always worrying, and.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
We panic about everything.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
But if you can break it down and say to people, look,
you can't save the world on your own, but you
can do the best you can do, that's it.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Stop there.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
And if it means getting flower pots in your windowsill
or buying eco products from good sources, you can make
little steps. So we're really against ramming our message down
people's throats. We're not aggressive in that respect. We want
to keep the humor of the competition very clear, but
we want people to understand that the humor is a
(08:07):
means to an end, which is to try and just
get people to realize how lovely these animals are. When
we moved to Tanzania, I loved animals. I always have done.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
We've got pets.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
I like wildlife, but I've taken it for granted absolutely.
And I heard a story from an old British soldier
who I met in Tanzania in Diroslam and he said,
when I came here after the Second World War, he
was I think he was sixteen when he got there,
and he said, there were rhinos like sheep on the
(08:39):
outskirts of diros alarm. So when I say sheep as
in the sheep in the UK are on every field
that you see when you drive through the UK. And
I said, but now there's what knight, He said, no,
there's five in the serengetti as in five rhinos. And
I thought, wow, that's sixty years. It's gone from tens
of thousands of rhinos to none. And it was that
(09:00):
one moment that made me suddenly realize that we all
take these things for granted because they're there.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
They're there in our lives.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
We're born with them, and we see them in the zoos,
and we read about them in books. But until you
sort of live, and I did, you live a moment
which reminds you that these things are not here forever
unless we all do something to stop it. It struck
me as a thing and I've always since then, I've
been a big believer in making people go, oh wow, no,
(09:29):
that is a cool picture. That is a funny photo.
I'd like to enter the competition if I've got one.
But thirdly, also I could do a bit more than
I actually do to help this wildlife.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Getting started. How are you getting attention?
Speaker 3 (10:00):
So we were very lucky but at the beginning we
set up a little website and you entered your pictures
directly on the website, which is still the case now
it's a free to enter competition. We're not commercially minded
on that front, and luckily with the press are huge
fans of the competition.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
In a way, I think.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
It's considered as the good news story amongst normally bad news.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
The press love the bad news stuff.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
And now and again they like something a bit more lighthearted,
which ironically it's not because of its underlying reason for existence.
But it's a very easy thing for people to look
at and enjoy, whether it's twenty seconds or two minute piece.
But given the rife nature of social media and TikTok
and blogs and everything online podcasts, it's been an excellent
(10:50):
sort of self marketed piece of material. And we have
half a million followers on Instagram and same again on
Facebook and so on, and it's been taken out of
our hands. I really don't take a lot of credits neither.
It's Paul for the success of the competition because it
was a chance meeting, a chance decision, a chance idea.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
But it was the press.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
It was a British newspaper called The Daily Telegraph that
printed the images and it went like wildfire from there.
And so now last year we had it's measured in
eyeballs on the images. Last year we had twelve billion
eyeballs on the images.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
That was billion with a bee, billion with a bee
for Bravo.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Yes, that's amazing.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
Yeah, I mean, it's really amazing, and we do our
best to make sure very often. I mean, if I'm
being very frank on this podcast, we know that lots
of people look at the pictures and then turn the
page or swipe or whatever it might be and don't
think about it again. But they'll say, oh, yeah, I
remember I saw some funny pictures of animals. And it's
very difficult to maybe engage all these people, but we
(11:56):
do know firsthand that it does work because we get
a ton of messages which are difficult to get through
but mainly on email, saying love what you're doing, love
the idea, love the concept, and it ranges from CEOs
to senior people in the media industry, to kids, to
board housewives to board house husbands, and they write and
(12:19):
they say to us, this is amazing, this is funny.
I love it, and I love the fact that I
can talk to my peers or my kids or my
parents and show them these images and create the same
sort of convivial feeling amongst this group of people and
generally create a positive mood from particularly now I think
(12:39):
where you may disagree, but certainly in the UK, there's
this heavy sense that everything's doom and gloom that whether
it's Israel or Ukraine or there's this sort of permanent
thing going on, and then comedy wildlife just is a
soft break from.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
The bad news.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
We try to refocus people's concerns and say, look, some
things are out of your hands Israel, Ukraine, these are
problems you can't solve, but you can do something on
a conservation bias.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
I like that. How do you raise the money for
the whole process? Membership is a donations.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
We have sponsorship, so Nick on our sponsors this year
and the world last year and it's been great working
with them. Before that, we didn't raise money, so it
was a free to enter competition and we.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Let the press use the pictures for free.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
Also, I'm sure a more commercially minded person would turn
this into a much higher revenue generating cut thing, but
we generate revenue mainly through the marketing of the images,
so we merchandise if you enter. So, for example, if
your wife enters the competition and gets to the final
sixty or seventy, we would write to earn. So you've
(13:51):
made the final seventy, you did sign in the terms
of conditions that you would allow us to make use
of your image, for exhibitions, for postcards, all sorts of merchandise.
But because we're not monsters, we're just making sure you're
happy with that, and if you are happy, then great
and we'll go ahead. The business which generates income through
the merchandising. We have the sponsorship from whichever the headline
(14:14):
sponsor is, which is nick On at the moment, and
from time to time we get philanthropists chucking in a
bit just so we can keep the business running because
it's not quite not for profit, but we give ten
percent of everything we make gross to the charity we
support each year. We change charities from time to time.
We're currently supporting a British charity called the Whitley Fund
(14:36):
for Nature. Before that we are with Born Free to
another big British charity, and then we supported a small
charity in Borneo that worked with the orangutangs.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
We're a small team. We're very flexible.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
We can pick and choose the charities depending on how
the money gets used.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Because it's important for us to be able to tell a.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
Story, to say okay, we've got the competition, which raises
humor and laughs and smiles. Those smiles create the empathy
I've talked about, which then helps people to make a
positive step towards some form of animal conservation. Then we
have on the other side the merchandising, and then we
want the charity that we support financially to be able
(15:17):
to say to us, well, this year, the money you
gave us helped save could be twenty lions that were
re released into a contained park in the Serengetti. So
we make sure the charities can tell us a good
story or can share a good story with us that
our money has helped to create. We don't have enough
income to say we can give hundreds of thousands to anyone,
(15:40):
but we can definitely, as one more thing, help a specific.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Charity with their target.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
So which is why we chose the Orangutangs, because that
charity had very little, and actually the charity that has
very little, if you give them ten thousand dollars, for example,
that's a huge boost to them and they can achieve
what they wanted to achieve. We're scaling up a bit now,
we're recruiting two more people to run the business with us.
It's taken off because of its popularity and it's an
(16:10):
easy entry to market. These pictures make people laugh, and
I think the secret to it is that humor in
an image is quite border free. You know, someone in Japan,
or someone in the States, or someone in the UK
or someone in Iceland will find that image funny, possibly
for different reasons, but they'll still find it funny. And
(16:31):
you know, if I crack a joke about something that
has immediate kind of borders to it, some countries won't
like my joke, and you know, might be offensive to others.
But these images, they're free of all that, which I
think is one of the core reasons. And this is
all retrospective thinking because we didn't expect the competition to
be this popular, but I think that's one of the
(16:52):
reasons it's so big. We sell exhibitions around the world.
We've got about eighteen going on at the moment. They
really are all over the world. There's one coming to
Smithfield Museums, Massachusetts, it opens next week actually, and there's
one in the Netherlands that's permanent, from the US to
the Netherlands to all over to Japan.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
One in Denmark opening. It seems to not be an issue.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
Everyone enjoys the pictures, which I think is the secret
to the success of this thing.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
These localized these so its are they taking that year's
pictures or what are they.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Doing good question?
Speaker 3 (17:28):
Actually, the pictures don't get old because you can choose
one from the first year twenty fifteen and laugh as
much as one from last year. The one in Smithfield,
Massachusetts is the top fifty from twenty twenty four, so
it's the finalists and the winners. But the one in
the Netherlands, for example, they pick the ones that they
(17:49):
like from over the years, and they keep mixing it up,
so they'll pick two or three from each year, and
then the next year they'll do the same with different ones.
It's free and most of the exhibitions tend to be free,
which is great, so people get through the door. They
then might spend some money on the merchandising, which is
great for us. And it's really so that we remain
a sustainable business. We're not trying to convert it into
(18:11):
a multi million dollar business. We're trying to make sure
the competition is sustainable. If we can make some decent
income and sponsor more and more charities with what we make,
then great.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
That's sort of the pipe dream I have to say.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
By the way, just as an aside. If going up
to see mountain gorillas is on your bucket list, going
to Barneo to see orangutans is on mine. I think
it will be remarkable.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Yeah, I would join you on that. That's another bucket listing.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
I think orans are more distant and more cautious, but
mountain gorillas are very social and remarkably open to hanging
out with people.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
Paul Joints and Hicks is actually running a safari trip
there this Friday.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
I spoke to him this morning. He's going with six clients.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Normally I go with him because we do comedy wildlife
safaris that we run together. In fact, last year's safari
was one hundred percent US citizens who came on our group.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
It was amazing. It was so lovely. And we're big.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Fans of the American tourists because they seem to have
a natural energy and interest. I mean, if they're going
to make the effort to go from the States to
East Africa, that's a big journey, and they were so interested.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Sometimes you can get a bit blase.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
A when you see these things every day, or if
you haven't done it, or you think it's nothing amazing,
and what was great last year was the whole group
was so into it. I think this is our permanent
thing is we want people to realize that wildlife is great.
Everything we see, even all the Marvel movies are based
on humans with superpowers, but those superpowers exist in the
(19:49):
animal world.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Insects can do some.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
Of the things that the Marvel characters do and so on,
And we're trying to remind people again without shoving it
down people's throats, which I think is the wrong approach.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
If somebody wanted to go on safari with you guys,
how would they communicates.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
On our website, there's a little link and you can
click it in. It just sends an email to Paul
or me and we then get in touch. We've got
a waiting list at the moment, but actually things fluctuate
all the time, so it's worth emailing and getting on
the waiting list. We do it with the photography slant
as well, if you want to learn photography on it
at the same time.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
So let's talk from here about the contest that made
you famous. The deadline this year is June thirtieth. What
a sparing photographers need to know to submit their work.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
So it's super simple.
Speaker 3 (20:53):
There's different categories, but ultimately you can have a portfolio
which is a group of images. You can have individual
and if you're under sixteen you can enter the junior category.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
You enter on our website.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Which is Comedy Wildlife Photo dot Com, and you just
fit in a very simple registration form like all these websites,
and then you enter your pictures and that's it. There's
no payment, you're done, and we then go through the
images over the summer and by October we announce the
(21:29):
finalists and then in December we have for award ceremony
in London on the River opposite houses of Parliament. It's
not complicated. Like I said at the beginning, Paul and
I are not complicated people. We want this was a
simple thing, and as we were trying to hold onto
the simplicity of it all, you enter on the website
and then you're done. As I said, if you're worried
(21:51):
about us abusing copyright or taking art to images, we
make sure before we use anyone's images that they're actually
happy with what they've signed in the first place. And
sometimes people say, actually I didn't realize what it was
because I don't read terms and conditions and we see it.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Don't worry. Totally understand.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
You have a whole series of categories. Do people need
to enter under one of those categories.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
It makes it easier from an organization point of view
for us. So if you've got an underwater shot of
a clownfish, there's the underwater category. If it's a lion,
it will go in the animals on the land category.
If it's a duck, it will be in the animals
in the air category. Last year, we had an eagle
that had swooped down and caught a fish and then
(22:36):
swooped off again but dropped the fish, and when the
picture was taken, the eagle was in front of the
fish and it looked like the fish.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Was chasing the eagle in the air.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
So we got a lot of emails from that author saying,
is this animals in the air?
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Is this animals in the water?
Speaker 3 (22:53):
I don't know what's category and which said look, but
in any category you want, because if we see an
image that's funny, we will.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
Make sure it ends up in the correct category.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
We're certainly not so difficult that we'd say, well, you
put it in the wrong category.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
So you can't win.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
The good images will rise to the top because it's
Paul Me and Michelle, who's the third important cog in this,
who go through all the images and then we give
the top seventy to the judges, to about fifteen judges.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
So you have a junior category under sixteen and a
young photographer category under twenty five.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Yes, so that's the Nikon category. And it's slightly awkward
because they want the youth to get into photography rightly so,
and so if you're sixteen to twenty five, that's a category,
and if you're under sixteen, that's a separate category.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
You have a video clip category, which I guess is
what the Eagle and the Fisher came out of, where
you can interrupt to two video clips. Each one can
be no more than fifteen seconds. Do you get an
increasing number of videos?
Speaker 3 (23:54):
We do slowly, slowly oddly, I thought when we opened
that video category about six years ago, we had about
ten entries, none of which were funny, so we didn't
have a winner that year. We're quite strict on that
if it's not humorous, there won't be a winner. And
now we get about two to three hundred we're trying
to push that because actually I think that's a huge market,
(24:16):
particularly with TikTok, and people seem to prefer the short
movies to the still image.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
There's benefits to both.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
Obviously, books and calendars work better with a still image
than a moving image. We don't get loads of entries,
but we always get now at least ten funny ones,
which I guess in the whole scheme of things we
want to show people funny things. We only need fifty
excellent still images and we only need probably four great videos.
(24:44):
There's some amazing videos I see on social media that
never get entered into our competition. I think because it's
the name of it.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
What kind of tips do you have for aspiring photographers
in terms of getting a great comedy wildlife image?
Speaker 3 (25:00):
Patients would probably be the first one, but also you
don't have to go to the Serengetti or East Africa
to get a great shot. We had a pigeon shot
in Glasgow in Scotland which didn't win but came third.
I think, and remember that any animal that isn't your
dog or your cat or cow or horse pretty much
(25:23):
is going to be wild.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
So we get a lot of squirrel entries.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
So the first thing I'd say is patients, because if
you see animal behavior and it might be a squirrel
out of your window. As the winner from Tampa Bay
told me a few years ago, she said, I just
see the squirrels running up and down a tree. And
I sat there with my camera for twenty minutes and
now and again I started to recognize repeated behavior. The
squirrels would do the same sort of thing, and then
(25:47):
I just pressed the button and I got the picture
I wanted. So that's the patient side. The positive thing
is you can do that wherever you are in the world.
If there's any kind of wildlife, it could be insects.
We've had an amazing entry this year of an ant
leaping from a leaf. I can't really describe it, but
it's one of the funniest things I've seen. So I'm
(26:07):
pretty sure that will make it through to the finalists.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
But that's just an ant, and an ant is wild.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
And the third thing is have your camera with you,
because I think a lot of aspiring photographers tend to
feel that they should take their camera out when the
light is right or when it's the perfect conditions, and
actually you should always have your camera with you.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
First.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
You don't know what's going to happen, so you need
to be ready. But also the hardest thing about this
competition is it's got to be funny. There's a heavy
amount of chance in what the animal does. You don't
know what the animal is going to do. You can
see the repeated behavior and maybe get lucky, but have
your camera with you at all times, and be critical
(26:50):
of your own work because we do get of the
whatever twelve thousand entries we got last year, maybe five
thousand people didn't really need to enter because they were
either not at all funny or very badly shot, you know,
out of focus, you could barely see what the image was.
So a bit of self criticism is good if you
(27:12):
want to win the competition. If you want to get
involved and enter the picture and hope, then go for it.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
I'm very curious because so many people nowadays, as the
cameras have improved dramatically, walk around with their phone taking pictures.
Can they enter those pictures or is a problem with
pictures taken by phone?
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Excellent question.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
You can use your phone, and the smartphones are so
good now that actually the quality is there. It's easier
to use a real camera because you can take pictures
faster in terms of keeping your finger pressed on the button,
and you can zoom in and zoom out without ruining
the quality of the image. So if you have a
real camera, you're going to have a better chance of
(27:54):
taking a sharp, inspiring image, but the phones can be used.
The technical course side of these is that we only
really need a file that's going to be about thirty megabytes,
so from that we can do the competition. Your pictures
can be printed and put poster a size for exhibitions
or for the awards night. So although there's a better
(28:17):
chance as a photographer of taking a better picture with
a real camera than there is with a smartphone, some
of the latest smartphones pictures are incredibly good, so you
don't have to go out and buy the best.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
Thing you can find in the world. Your smartphone may
well be good enough.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
If a listener having listen to you, is inspired, where
do they go to enter?
Speaker 3 (28:36):
So go to our website www dot Comedy, Wildlife, Photo
dot com Bit of a mouthful and there's a big
button that says enter now, and it will take you
straight to a registration page and then it will say,
enter your pictures and you can put them in the
right categories, or you can make a mistake and we'll
(28:57):
forgive those mistakes.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
Tom, I want to think thank you for joining me.
The Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards are accepting entries now at
Comedywildlife Photo dot com. Even if you aren't planning to nner,
go to their website. Look at all the great photos
of animals have been taking over the years. They're really
fun to look at, and they do both make you
feel better and remind you of the importance of conservation.
(29:19):
So Tom, I really appreciate both way you've spent your
life doing and your willingness to talk with us today.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
Well, thank you very much. It's been a pleasure and
an honor.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
Thank you to my guest, Tom Solomon. You can learn
more about the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards on our show
page at Newtsworld dot com. Newsworld is produced by Gagerstree
sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Guarnsey Sloan. Our
researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show was
created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to the team at
(29:51):
Gingistree sixty. If you've been enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll
go to Apple Podcasts and both rate us with five
stars and give us a review so others can learn
what it's all about. Right now, listeners of newts World
can sign up for my three free weekly columns at
gingrishfe sixty dot com slash newsletter. I'm Newt Gingrich.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
This is Newtsworldline
On this episode of Newts World. As someone who loves
animals and particularly seeing animals in their natural habitat, I
am delighted to introduce my guest Tom Sullom. He is
the co founder of the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards along
with Paul Joynson Hicks, which is a unique photography contest
capturing the amazing and funny things animals do in their
(00:28):
natural environment. Their mission is quote through the Comedy Wildlife
Photography Awards, we aimed a widened understanding and engagement of
a sustainable world and wildlife conservation, specifically for the preservation
of biodiversity and the health and enrichment of everyone on Earth.
That's quite a story as to how this contest came
into being, so I really pleased Tom will join me
(00:49):
to talk about their upcoming contest with entries due by
June thirtieth. Tom, welcome and thank you for joining me
on NEWTS World.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Thanks very much for having me. It's an honor.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Your bio says that your journey to becoming a photographer
wasn't exactly direct psychology degree corporate jobs photography. Did you
always want to be a photographer or was it just
a hobby that eventually led you to a career.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
It was a hobby and I can't even say that
I was one of those guys that was given a
box brown near the age of four and taught by
my great grandfather.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
That didn't happen.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
I followed my nose, my commercial nose, I guess, went
into the city in London, and I thought I should
really be focusing on just making as much money as
I could. That seemed to be my eighteen year old brain,
and I think it was about thirteen years I realized
there were other things that I was also interested in,
and the photography. It's quite a bold move, but it
(01:55):
was if you can be commercial about something creative like
photographer or any kind of art, you can make a living,
not the same kind of living as you'd make in
the city. And so I started doing the more creative
thing of photography. And then my wife was offered a
job in North Africa. In Tanzania, where we moved in
twenty thirteen, is a family with two young kids, and
(02:18):
that's when I started teaching myself wildlife photography.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Before we get to our life photography, I've visited Tanzania briefly.
What was it like living there.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
I would go back there in a heartbeat. You know,
when you go there you're filled with anxiety.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
You know.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
We come from a middle class part of London. You
hear and read the scary things and you tend to
remember them rather than the positive things, except for great
words that carry all away, like Serengetti and Kilimanjaro. Those
things obviously appealed. But once we arrived and found our house,
Tanzanians are the most lovely nation of people I've ever met.
(02:55):
It's an egalitarian way of living. I think that harks
back to their the sort of communist leader they had
in the sixties. Things have changed there quite a lot,
by the people have remained very egalitarian. They love European
kids or Western World kids. So there's a lot of
talk of danger and risk, and you mustn't know. If
you walk around with a giant Rolex and your iPad
(03:17):
under your arm, you may ask for trouble. But that
would happen anywhere. But actually in Tanzanier we found us
it was very safe. You can take precautions, but in fact,
I've never felt safer in any place that I've lived,
and I lived in about four or five different countries,
So it was amazing.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
It was an amazing place that I would go back.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Tell us about how you came up with us, because
we do want our listeners to have a chance to
actually participate if they want to the idea of the
Nikon Comedy Wildlife Award where did it come from?
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Right at the beginning, Paul Johnson Hicks, who came up
with this with me, was photographing a Vero's eagle owl,
which is a very impressive eagle owl, somewhere in Tanzania.
He lives in Tanzanier. Balled us and the eagle turned
away from him and looked back at him between its legs,
and he took the shot. So he's got two legs
(04:09):
with eyes looking at him from between the legs, and
he showed it to me and I sort of chuckled,
and I said, that's great. I guess there's no use
for this type of picture, and he said, no, there
is no resource where I could put a picture like this.
It has to be elegant and splendid and look like
a sort of king of the trees. And then together
in that conversation we said, it's a shame. We should
think of something where you could upload these real life
(04:32):
images of wildlife that are excellentally photographed, and that was
the crux of the beginning of the competition. And then
both of us, being commercially minded, if I'm being very honest,
we thought, well, how do we get this to work?
And we said, well, actually, we could use the humor
of this image and of other if there are other
(04:52):
images like this to appeal to people's empathetic nature, and
so we can launch the competition and we will talk
about how the comedy images will also create a sort
of a movement towards understanding conservation and the state of
wildlife at the moment. So we realized there was the
seriousness of comedy. Effectively, is that you've got. We did
(05:14):
a bit of research and there's a lot that's been written,
a lot of research has been done on how humor
can get people to see things in a different light.
And the main example we came across time and time
again was if I show you pictures of a rhino
that's been shot or killed and has this horn sawn off,
or an elephant that's been shot, one can tend to
(05:35):
be put off by that. You feel stressed, you feel
a bit guilty, possibly to the point where often you
might just go, oh, I don't want to see that,
you know, I like elephants.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
I don't want to see the dead ones.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
And you don't necessarily take action or feel a need
to do anything because you want to ignore it. Whereas
if you then see a humorous image of let's say,
an elephant, and this is based on research. This is
not something that I or Paul knew were not particularly
smart people, but it was more and what we read
the humor creates an empathy immediately and a link with
(06:05):
the animal you've just seen, and that empathy may lead
to nothing, but often it leads to a positive reaction
towards the animal or wildlife as it is. And so
we paired the two together. We had this picture that
Paul didn't know where to put, and then we had
this idea that actually humor might work and get people
(06:25):
enervated and energized towards maybe doing something positive. And thirdly,
given the state of Paul and I, you know, were photographers,
we're not kind of wildly working every hour that God's
given us, we thought, actually this is quite nice, because
people can do little things. The small step is better
than no step. And so that was the sort of
(06:47):
third point of the triangle for us, is that you've
seen this funny image, you might have one that you
can enter into the competition. And for people who are
seeing the competition, they might feel this empathy that I've
talked about and they can take little baby steps. Most
of us are not one hundred percent pure. We all fly,
(07:07):
we all drive, we all make use of the incredible
things that man has come up with. But there is
also something that we can all do that we never do.
And even if it's getting little flower pots on your windowsill,
that's going to save a few bees. And I know
that sounds slightly trivial and minor, but if that's the
best you can do, then that's better than nothing. And
(07:29):
so we've pushed the competition on the back of this.
The world's too big and too worrying, and the news
is always worrying, and.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
We panic about everything.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
But if you can break it down and say to people, look,
you can't save the world on your own, but you
can do the best you can do, that's it.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Stop there.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
And if it means getting flower pots in your windowsill
or buying eco products from good sources, you can make
little steps. So we're really against ramming our message down
people's throats. We're not aggressive in that respect. We want
to keep the humor of the competition very clear, but
we want people to understand that the humor is a
(08:07):
means to an end, which is to try and just
get people to realize how lovely these animals are. When
we moved to Tanzania, I loved animals. I always have done.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
We've got pets.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
I like wildlife, but I've taken it for granted absolutely.
And I heard a story from an old British soldier
who I met in Tanzania in Diroslam and he said,
when I came here after the Second World War, he
was I think he was sixteen when he got there,
and he said, there were rhinos like sheep on the
(08:39):
outskirts of diros alarm. So when I say sheep as
in the sheep in the UK are on every field
that you see when you drive through the UK. And
I said, but now there's what knight, He said, no,
there's five in the serengetti as in five rhinos. And
I thought, wow, that's sixty years. It's gone from tens
of thousands of rhinos to none. And it was that
(09:00):
one moment that made me suddenly realize that we all
take these things for granted because they're there.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
They're there in our lives.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
We're born with them, and we see them in the zoos,
and we read about them in books. But until you
sort of live, and I did, you live a moment
which reminds you that these things are not here forever
unless we all do something to stop it. It struck
me as a thing and I've always since then, I've
been a big believer in making people go, oh wow, no,
(09:29):
that is a cool picture. That is a funny photo.
I'd like to enter the competition if I've got one.
But thirdly, also I could do a bit more than
I actually do to help this wildlife.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Getting started. How are you getting attention?
Speaker 3 (10:00):
So we were very lucky but at the beginning we
set up a little website and you entered your pictures
directly on the website, which is still the case now
it's a free to enter competition. We're not commercially minded
on that front, and luckily with the press are huge
fans of the competition.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
In a way, I think.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
It's considered as the good news story amongst normally bad news.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
The press love the bad news stuff.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
And now and again they like something a bit more lighthearted,
which ironically it's not because of its underlying reason for existence.
But it's a very easy thing for people to look
at and enjoy, whether it's twenty seconds or two minute piece.
But given the rife nature of social media and TikTok
and blogs and everything online podcasts, it's been an excellent
(10:50):
sort of self marketed piece of material. And we have
half a million followers on Instagram and same again on
Facebook and so on, and it's been taken out of
our hands. I really don't take a lot of credits neither.
It's Paul for the success of the competition because it
was a chance meeting, a chance decision, a chance idea.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
But it was the press.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
It was a British newspaper called The Daily Telegraph that
printed the images and it went like wildfire from there.
And so now last year we had it's measured in
eyeballs on the images. Last year we had twelve billion
eyeballs on the images.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
That was billion with a bee, billion with a bee
for Bravo.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Yes, that's amazing.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
Yeah, I mean, it's really amazing, and we do our
best to make sure very often. I mean, if I'm
being very frank on this podcast, we know that lots
of people look at the pictures and then turn the
page or swipe or whatever it might be and don't
think about it again. But they'll say, oh, yeah, I
remember I saw some funny pictures of animals. And it's
very difficult to maybe engage all these people, but we
(11:56):
do know firsthand that it does work because we get
a ton of messages which are difficult to get through
but mainly on email, saying love what you're doing, love
the idea, love the concept, and it ranges from CEOs
to senior people in the media industry, to kids, to
board housewives to board house husbands, and they write and
(12:19):
they say to us, this is amazing, this is funny.
I love it, and I love the fact that I
can talk to my peers or my kids or my
parents and show them these images and create the same
sort of convivial feeling amongst this group of people and
generally create a positive mood from particularly now I think
(12:39):
where you may disagree, but certainly in the UK, there's
this heavy sense that everything's doom and gloom that whether
it's Israel or Ukraine or there's this sort of permanent
thing going on, and then comedy wildlife just is a
soft break from.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
The bad news.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
We try to refocus people's concerns and say, look, some
things are out of your hands Israel, Ukraine, these are
problems you can't solve, but you can do something on
a conservation bias.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
I like that. How do you raise the money for
the whole process? Membership is a donations.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
We have sponsorship, so Nick on our sponsors this year
and the world last year and it's been great working
with them. Before that, we didn't raise money, so it
was a free to enter competition and we.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Let the press use the pictures for free.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
Also, I'm sure a more commercially minded person would turn
this into a much higher revenue generating cut thing, but
we generate revenue mainly through the marketing of the images,
so we merchandise if you enter. So, for example, if
your wife enters the competition and gets to the final
sixty or seventy, we would write to earn. So you've
(13:51):
made the final seventy, you did sign in the terms
of conditions that you would allow us to make use
of your image, for exhibitions, for postcards, all sorts of merchandise.
But because we're not monsters, we're just making sure you're
happy with that, and if you are happy, then great
and we'll go ahead. The business which generates income through
the merchandising. We have the sponsorship from whichever the headline
(14:14):
sponsor is, which is nick On at the moment, and
from time to time we get philanthropists chucking in a
bit just so we can keep the business running because
it's not quite not for profit, but we give ten
percent of everything we make gross to the charity we
support each year. We change charities from time to time.
We're currently supporting a British charity called the Whitley Fund
(14:36):
for Nature. Before that we are with Born Free to
another big British charity, and then we supported a small
charity in Borneo that worked with the orangutangs.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
We're a small team. We're very flexible.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
We can pick and choose the charities depending on how
the money gets used.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Because it's important for us to be able to tell a.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
Story, to say okay, we've got the competition, which raises
humor and laughs and smiles. Those smiles create the empathy
I've talked about, which then helps people to make a
positive step towards some form of animal conservation. Then we
have on the other side the merchandising, and then we
want the charity that we support financially to be able
(15:17):
to say to us, well, this year, the money you
gave us helped save could be twenty lions that were
re released into a contained park in the Serengetti. So
we make sure the charities can tell us a good
story or can share a good story with us that
our money has helped to create. We don't have enough
income to say we can give hundreds of thousands to anyone,
(15:40):
but we can definitely, as one more thing, help a specific.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Charity with their target.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
So which is why we chose the Orangutangs, because that
charity had very little, and actually the charity that has
very little, if you give them ten thousand dollars, for example,
that's a huge boost to them and they can achieve
what they wanted to achieve. We're scaling up a bit now,
we're recruiting two more people to run the business with us.
It's taken off because of its popularity and it's an
(16:10):
easy entry to market. These pictures make people laugh, and
I think the secret to it is that humor in
an image is quite border free. You know, someone in Japan,
or someone in the States, or someone in the UK
or someone in Iceland will find that image funny, possibly
for different reasons, but they'll still find it funny. And
(16:31):
you know, if I crack a joke about something that
has immediate kind of borders to it, some countries won't
like my joke, and you know, might be offensive to others.
But these images, they're free of all that, which I
think is one of the core reasons. And this is
all retrospective thinking because we didn't expect the competition to
be this popular, but I think that's one of the
(16:52):
reasons it's so big. We sell exhibitions around the world.
We've got about eighteen going on at the moment. They
really are all over the world. There's one coming to
Smithfield Museums, Massachusetts, it opens next week actually, and there's
one in the Netherlands that's permanent, from the US to
the Netherlands to all over to Japan.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
One in Denmark opening. It seems to not be an issue.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
Everyone enjoys the pictures, which I think is the secret
to the success of this thing.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
These localized these so its are they taking that year's
pictures or what are they.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Doing good question?
Speaker 3 (17:28):
Actually, the pictures don't get old because you can choose
one from the first year twenty fifteen and laugh as
much as one from last year. The one in Smithfield,
Massachusetts is the top fifty from twenty twenty four, so
it's the finalists and the winners. But the one in
the Netherlands, for example, they pick the ones that they
(17:49):
like from over the years, and they keep mixing it up,
so they'll pick two or three from each year, and
then the next year they'll do the same with different ones.
It's free and most of the exhibitions tend to be free,
which is great, so people get through the door. They
then might spend some money on the merchandising, which is
great for us. And it's really so that we remain
a sustainable business. We're not trying to convert it into
(18:11):
a multi million dollar business. We're trying to make sure
the competition is sustainable. If we can make some decent
income and sponsor more and more charities with what we make,
then great.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
That's sort of the pipe dream I have to say.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
By the way, just as an aside. If going up
to see mountain gorillas is on your bucket list, going
to Barneo to see orangutans is on mine. I think
it will be remarkable.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Yeah, I would join you on that. That's another bucket listing.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
I think orans are more distant and more cautious, but
mountain gorillas are very social and remarkably open to hanging
out with people.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
Paul Joints and Hicks is actually running a safari trip
there this Friday.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
I spoke to him this morning. He's going with six clients.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Normally I go with him because we do comedy wildlife
safaris that we run together. In fact, last year's safari
was one hundred percent US citizens who came on our group.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
It was amazing. It was so lovely. And we're big.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Fans of the American tourists because they seem to have
a natural energy and interest. I mean, if they're going
to make the effort to go from the States to
East Africa, that's a big journey, and they were so interested.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Sometimes you can get a bit blase.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
A when you see these things every day, or if
you haven't done it, or you think it's nothing amazing,
and what was great last year was the whole group
was so into it. I think this is our permanent
thing is we want people to realize that wildlife is great.
Everything we see, even all the Marvel movies are based
on humans with superpowers, but those superpowers exist in the
(19:49):
animal world.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Insects can do some.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
Of the things that the Marvel characters do and so on,
And we're trying to remind people again without shoving it
down people's throats, which I think is the wrong approach.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
If somebody wanted to go on safari with you guys,
how would they communicates.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
On our website, there's a little link and you can
click it in. It just sends an email to Paul
or me and we then get in touch. We've got
a waiting list at the moment, but actually things fluctuate
all the time, so it's worth emailing and getting on
the waiting list. We do it with the photography slant
as well, if you want to learn photography on it
at the same time.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
So let's talk from here about the contest that made
you famous. The deadline this year is June thirtieth. What
a sparing photographers need to know to submit their work.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
So it's super simple.
Speaker 3 (20:53):
There's different categories, but ultimately you can have a portfolio
which is a group of images. You can have individual
and if you're under sixteen you can enter the junior category.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
You enter on our website.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Which is Comedy Wildlife Photo dot Com, and you just
fit in a very simple registration form like all these websites,
and then you enter your pictures and that's it. There's
no payment, you're done, and we then go through the
images over the summer and by October we announce the
(21:29):
finalists and then in December we have for award ceremony
in London on the River opposite houses of Parliament. It's
not complicated. Like I said at the beginning, Paul and
I are not complicated people. We want this was a
simple thing, and as we were trying to hold onto
the simplicity of it all, you enter on the website
and then you're done. As I said, if you're worried
(21:51):
about us abusing copyright or taking art to images, we
make sure before we use anyone's images that they're actually
happy with what they've signed in the first place. And
sometimes people say, actually I didn't realize what it was
because I don't read terms and conditions and we see it.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Don't worry. Totally understand.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
You have a whole series of categories. Do people need
to enter under one of those categories.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
It makes it easier from an organization point of view
for us. So if you've got an underwater shot of
a clownfish, there's the underwater category. If it's a lion,
it will go in the animals on the land category.
If it's a duck, it will be in the animals
in the air category. Last year, we had an eagle
that had swooped down and caught a fish and then
(22:36):
swooped off again but dropped the fish, and when the
picture was taken, the eagle was in front of the
fish and it looked like the fish.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Was chasing the eagle in the air.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
So we got a lot of emails from that author saying,
is this animals in the air?
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Is this animals in the water?
Speaker 3 (22:53):
I don't know what's category and which said look, but
in any category you want, because if we see an
image that's funny, we will.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
Make sure it ends up in the correct category.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
We're certainly not so difficult that we'd say, well, you
put it in the wrong category.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
So you can't win.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
The good images will rise to the top because it's
Paul Me and Michelle, who's the third important cog in this,
who go through all the images and then we give
the top seventy to the judges, to about fifteen judges.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
So you have a junior category under sixteen and a
young photographer category under twenty five.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Yes, so that's the Nikon category. And it's slightly awkward
because they want the youth to get into photography rightly so,
and so if you're sixteen to twenty five, that's a category,
and if you're under sixteen, that's a separate category.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
You have a video clip category, which I guess is
what the Eagle and the Fisher came out of, where
you can interrupt to two video clips. Each one can
be no more than fifteen seconds. Do you get an
increasing number of videos?
Speaker 3 (23:54):
We do slowly, slowly oddly, I thought when we opened
that video category about six years ago, we had about
ten entries, none of which were funny, so we didn't
have a winner that year. We're quite strict on that
if it's not humorous, there won't be a winner. And
now we get about two to three hundred we're trying
to push that because actually I think that's a huge market,
(24:16):
particularly with TikTok, and people seem to prefer the short
movies to the still image.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
There's benefits to both.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
Obviously, books and calendars work better with a still image
than a moving image. We don't get loads of entries,
but we always get now at least ten funny ones,
which I guess in the whole scheme of things we
want to show people funny things. We only need fifty
excellent still images and we only need probably four great videos.
(24:44):
There's some amazing videos I see on social media that
never get entered into our competition. I think because it's
the name of it.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
What kind of tips do you have for aspiring photographers
in terms of getting a great comedy wildlife image?
Speaker 3 (25:00):
Patients would probably be the first one, but also you
don't have to go to the Serengetti or East Africa
to get a great shot. We had a pigeon shot
in Glasgow in Scotland which didn't win but came third.
I think, and remember that any animal that isn't your
dog or your cat or cow or horse pretty much
(25:23):
is going to be wild.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
So we get a lot of squirrel entries.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
So the first thing I'd say is patients, because if
you see animal behavior and it might be a squirrel
out of your window. As the winner from Tampa Bay
told me a few years ago, she said, I just
see the squirrels running up and down a tree. And
I sat there with my camera for twenty minutes and
now and again I started to recognize repeated behavior. The
squirrels would do the same sort of thing, and then
(25:47):
I just pressed the button and I got the picture
I wanted. So that's the patient side. The positive thing
is you can do that wherever you are in the world.
If there's any kind of wildlife, it could be insects.
We've had an amazing entry this year of an ant
leaping from a leaf. I can't really describe it, but
it's one of the funniest things I've seen. So I'm
(26:07):
pretty sure that will make it through to the finalists.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
But that's just an ant, and an ant is wild.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
And the third thing is have your camera with you,
because I think a lot of aspiring photographers tend to
feel that they should take their camera out when the
light is right or when it's the perfect conditions, and
actually you should always have your camera with you.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
First.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
You don't know what's going to happen, so you need
to be ready. But also the hardest thing about this
competition is it's got to be funny. There's a heavy
amount of chance in what the animal does. You don't
know what the animal is going to do. You can
see the repeated behavior and maybe get lucky, but have
your camera with you at all times, and be critical
(26:50):
of your own work because we do get of the
whatever twelve thousand entries we got last year, maybe five
thousand people didn't really need to enter because they were
either not at all funny or very badly shot, you know,
out of focus, you could barely see what the image was.
So a bit of self criticism is good if you
(27:12):
want to win the competition. If you want to get
involved and enter the picture and hope, then go for it.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
I'm very curious because so many people nowadays, as the
cameras have improved dramatically, walk around with their phone taking pictures.
Can they enter those pictures or is a problem with
pictures taken by phone?
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Excellent question.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
You can use your phone, and the smartphones are so
good now that actually the quality is there. It's easier
to use a real camera because you can take pictures
faster in terms of keeping your finger pressed on the button,
and you can zoom in and zoom out without ruining
the quality of the image. So if you have a
real camera, you're going to have a better chance of
(27:54):
taking a sharp, inspiring image, but the phones can be used.
The technical course side of these is that we only
really need a file that's going to be about thirty megabytes,
so from that we can do the competition. Your pictures
can be printed and put poster a size for exhibitions
or for the awards night. So although there's a better
(28:17):
chance as a photographer of taking a better picture with
a real camera than there is with a smartphone, some
of the latest smartphones pictures are incredibly good, so you
don't have to go out and buy the best.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
Thing you can find in the world. Your smartphone may
well be good enough.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
If a listener having listen to you, is inspired, where
do they go to enter?
Speaker 3 (28:36):
So go to our website www dot Comedy, Wildlife, Photo
dot com Bit of a mouthful and there's a big
button that says enter now, and it will take you
straight to a registration page and then it will say,
enter your pictures and you can put them in the
right categories, or you can make a mistake and we'll
(28:57):
forgive those mistakes.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
Tom, I want to think thank you for joining me.
The Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards are accepting entries now at
Comedywildlife Photo dot com. Even if you aren't planning to nner,
go to their website. Look at all the great photos
of animals have been taking over the years. They're really
fun to look at, and they do both make you
feel better and remind you of the importance of conservation.
(29:19):
So Tom, I really appreciate both way you've spent your
life doing and your willingness to talk with us today.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
Well, thank you very much. It's been a pleasure and
an honor.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
Thank you to my guest, Tom Solomon. You can learn
more about the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards on our show
page at Newtsworld dot com. Newsworld is produced by Gagerstree
sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Guarnsey Sloan. Our
researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show was
created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to the team at
(29:51):
Gingistree sixty. If you've been enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll
go to Apple Podcasts and both rate us with five
stars and give us a review so others can learn
what it's all about. Right now, listeners of newts World
can sign up for my three free weekly columns at
gingrishfe sixty dot com slash newsletter. I'm Newt Gingrich.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
This is Newtsworldline
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