Tokyo man honored in global photo competition

LONDON (Kyodo) An image taken by amateur photographer Jun Kezuka of two manatees napping on an underwater tree trunk has been "highly commended" in the Shell Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition.

This photograph by Jun Kezuka of napping manatees received special recognition at this year's Shell Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition. JUN KEZUKA PHOTO/KYODO

His photo will join the 2006 contest's 91 other winning images, selected from more than 18,000 entries in one of the world's largest and most prestigious wildlife photographic competitions, in an exhibition that opened to the public Saturday.

"It's my dream. My dream has come true. I'm very glad," Kezuka, a doctor from Tokyo, said ahead of the official unveiling of the photo in London's Natural History Museum.

"In Japan the competition is very famous, so I knew it would be very difficult to be acknowledged," he said.

But he also said the stiff competition did not deter him from entering his image.

Kezuka's effort secured him acknowledgment in the special Gerald Durrell Award for Endangered Wildlife given for the best image of a species officially listed in the 2005 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

The winner in that category was a Norwegian, Stig Frode Olsen, for his photo of an eider duck trying to lift off from a lake in Alaska.

Kezuka said photography has been his hobby for around 20 years and that his real passion is taking underwater photos. His manatee image was taken while snorkeling in Crystal River, Florida, in January while on vacation.

"They were in a quiet backwater and the water was rather dark. I took this picture very carefully so as not to ripple the mirrorlike surface or wake the sleeping beauties," Kezuka said in his description of the photo.

Staffan Widstrand, one of the judges of the competition, said numerous entries were received of manatees which all seemed to be taken in the same waters in Florida, but Kezuka's entry stood out.

"It takes quite a lot to do something different in a place that has been frequently photographed. Some photographers just know how to use the water's surface -- from below from certain angles it's a very potent mirror," he said.

"It's a way of seeing our world in a way you don't often see. There's the reflection aspect and the anthropomorphic aspect -- they could almost be people at home on a couch resting. We just liked it."

With thousands of entries from some 55 countries, Widstrand says judging is not easy.

"It's tough. I think the tendency has been for more and better entries from outside Europe, but that makes me happy because it means that wildlife photography is growing tremendously," he said.

He attributes the growth in large part to the explosion of digital photography, which has contributed to a boost in entries from Asia, especially Japan, Singapore, South Korea and China.

But Widstrand, a photographer and writer himself, said he is not surprised by the global acclaim surrounding the increasingly internationalized competition, stating, "It has great prestige, really. More than you might think from a London horizon.

"After all, the aim of this competition is to be like the Nobel Prize in wildlife photography, so of course for anyone who has any image awarded it's a major achievement," he said with a nod to the accomplishment of Kezuka.

The Shell Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition at the Natural History Museum in London runs until April 29 before touring the rest of Britain. It will move on to other parts of the world with a potential stop in Japan.