This 17-Year-Old Photographer Just Won a Prestigious Award For His Dramatic Work
Photographer Liron Gertsman has captured stunning wildlife from the Pacific Northwest to the jungles of the Amazon. During his travels, he’s encountered 1,129 species of bird and photographed nearly all of them. His work has been honored with numerous awards. All these accomplishments would be impressive for any career photographer, but Gertsman is only 17 years old. A native of Canada, Gertsman has been interested in nature, and birds in particular, from a young age, when he would notice different animals while walking around his neighborhood with his parents. “I think around the age of five, my parents gave me a little point-and-shoot camera for my birthday, and I started taking pictures,” he says. “From there, my love of photography and my love of nature went side by side.”
Gertsman’s latest accomplishment is winning the youth division of the 2018 Audubon Photography Awards for his image of cobalt-winged parakeets in the Ecuador’s Yasuní National Park. The story behind the photo is almost as striking as the piece itself. Gertsman travelled to Ecuador with photographers Karine Aigner and Lucas Bustamante and a group of other young photographers for a two-week-long intensive conservation photography workshop that explored the Cloud Forest and the Amazon. “When we were in the Amazon, we visited this very special location, owned and operated by the local indigenous community, where parakeets and sometimes parrots and macaws gather every day.” The spot, known as a clay lick, attracts the birds who need to eat the clay to combat the toxins and acid in the fruits they eat.
To reach the clay lick, the group first had to fly from Quito to the Amazon. “Then we had to take a few hour-long boat rides up the river to where we were based,” he says. “Every time we wanted to go to the clay lick from that base, we would have to take these small canoes out to cross the river and then hike for about half an hour through the hot, humid forest.” The group did the trek every day for three days. “On the third day we were finally rewarded with this incredible sight of hundreds of parakeets raining down on the forest floor.”
The primarily self-taught photographer approaches his work with an eye towards the abstract. “I think that the way to best illustrate to people just how incredible and amazing nature really is, is to display it in a more unique and artistic light,” he says. “For instance, using a low shutter speed, and getting some motion blur, which is something that I did in this parakeet photo.” He also is committed to promoting conservation and environmental education through his work: “If I could photograph any region in the world right now, I would choose Antarctica, because it's the scene of rapid climate change, and there's a lot going on there that might not be there for very long.”
Gertsman is now preparing for the next phase of his life. “Research of birds is also something I'm very passionate about. So in the fall I'm going to be studying science and biology in university, and I plan to get a degree in biology,” he says. “I'm trying to decide if I want to go down the path of studying birds, becoming an ornithologist, maybe getting a PhD, or go down the path of photography to document the world's natural beauty.” Whichever path he chooses, the earth is sure to benefit.
