Wildlife photographer stripped of prize in the Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year Contest for shot of leaping critter.

Spanish photographer Jose Luis Rodriguez says his photo shows a wild Iberian wolf. But organizers of a wildlife photography competition in which the image was entered say the animal was trained. Read about this sad disagreement at the msn site.

News of the competition itself is at the bbc website where these other winners are featured:

Fergus Gill, who was 17 years old when he entered the competition, won this year’s Young Photographer of the Year award for his picture of a brief but dramatic clash between two of the colourful UK songbirds.

With the help of his feisty cat, Igor Shpilenok won the Urban and Garden Wildlife category with the third image.

It’s that time of the year - Pictures Of The Year galleries have begun to show up online - one of the earlier ones seems to be from ottawacitizen.com. Below is my pick (showing my penchant for the pictorial - but of course). Do checkout the full galleries (yes; there are two parts) - part 1 and part 2.

by Alan Taylor
from theboston.com’s The Big Picture feature.

National Geographic’s International Photography Contest attracts thousands of entries from photographers of all skill levels around the world every year. While this year’s entry deadline has passed, there is still time to view and vote for your favorites in the Viewer’s Choice competition. National Geographic was kind enough to let me choose a few of their entries from 2009 for display here on The Big Picture. (25 photos total).

Each month, National Geographic magazine features breathtaking photographs in Visions of Earth. Browse through visions of the world as seen through a photographer’s eye. This month’s feature is truly exceptional. Enjoy the full gallery here.

If you’re an avid photographer who doesn’t loves the age of digital imaging, give thanks to the inventors of the charge-coupled device (CCD) sensor, Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith.

In 1969, Boyle and Smith were working at Bell Laboratories where the duo set out to develop better electronic memory. But in the end, they made a silicon plate with photo-sensitive cells on it instead. The following year, the inventors showcased a working videocam which utilized the sensor they developed.

For the record, other than CCD sensors, CMOS sensors are used in some digital cameras, too. However, CCD was invented first and also used in other fields such as astrophysics and in the medical industry. Such an invention certainly deserves a prominent award such as the Nobel Prize. There are two recipients to the Nobel Prize for Physics this year. One half went to Boyle and Smith, who are now 85 and 79, respectively, while the other half went to Charles K. Kao for his breakthrough in fiber optics technology. Click here to read more about the inventors. (See the full article here.)

William S. Boyle (left) and George E. Smith in a shot taken in 1974. (Credit: Alcatel-Lucent/Bell Labs via PDN)

Of all the species of office supplies, none is more adaptable than the wily paperclip. Over the millenia, paperclips have evolved to form chains, lamps, and, surprisingly, a house in Saskatchewan. Now introducing the latest incarnation, the paperclip tripod!

A couple of strategic bends transforms the humble paperclip into a stand for your camera. Scrounge a couple of clips from work and tuck them in your camera case. Then when you need a quick shot of you and your best mate at the coffee shop, just whip one out, prop your camera on it and shoot. The stand will hold a point-and-shoot horizontally or vertically with a little balancing. Bending and paperclips: the solution to so many of life’s problems.

Click here to know more about how to turn a paperclip into a Camera Stand.

The Russian avant-gardist Wassily Kandinsky — who dressed like the college professor he had trained to be and sounded like a mystic when he wasn’t thinking like a scientist — is the central god in the Guggenheim pantheon and genesis myth. The museum owns more of his work than of any other major Modernist and mounts some form of full-dress Kandinsky show like clockwork every 20 years or so.

It’s that time again. The Guggenheim’s last excursion into Kandinsky occurred in the early 1980s with three context-heavy exhibitions that examined his activities in all mediums, including his Art Nouveau embroidery and works by contemporary artists and designers. This one takes the opposite tack. It distills Kandinsky’s momentous career to about 100 paintings, with a large side order of works on paper displayed in an adjacent gallery. The canvases and almost nothing else fill Frank Lloyd Wright’s great rotunda from bottom to top, sometimes at the magisterial rate of one painting per bay.

This looks sensational. Organized with the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus in Munich and the Pompidou Center in Paris — sites of the world’s other major Kandinsky collections — it contains stupendous loans from all over.

See a audio-slideshow of a handful of the paintings here.

View the Guggenheim online exhibition here (truly awesome!)

PIXETRA CLUB’s FOTO-GURU CLASSROOM IN THE OUTDOORS is coming to Kochi in the third weekend of September. Learn to take photos without a lot of technical equipment and without spending a lot of time setting up the shot. Capture some wonderful slices of candid life!

Novice to advanced photo-enthusiasts, new-camera owners, experienced shooters, all levels of amateur photographers are quaranteed to have fun.

Tucked in the coconut groves of a unique Kerala village, Kuzhuppilly Beach House promises nature, backwaters, beaches, ample seafood & local people.

The class is structured to help a novice photographer understand step-by-step the theory & practise of taking great outdoor photos.

For more details click here.

Marina Cano is a Spanish wildlife photographer whose images have captivated many photo.net viewers. Her images are dramatic and touching all at once. But what is even more amazing is when you realize that her images come mainly from wildlife preserves/zoos in Europe, rather than the plains and savannas of Africa. This is an important lesson for many aspiring wildlife photographers to learn. You don’t have to fly across the world to make strong nature images (though many of us would like to). When the end result is what is important, and the end result is as strong as Marina’s images are, the method doesn’t matter at all.

“First of all, you must love animals, because you will spend a lot of time near them. Understand their behavior, and be patient. Then when you are shooting you must wait for the best light, wait for get the best opportunity, wait and wait. Keep your eyes wide open and creativity open as well.” -Marina Cano
Read More »
View Marina’s entire portfolio »

IMHO creating incredible and wow effects using Photoshop or other image software is the easy part - it’s visuals that are eye-catching and stunning concepts that need experience and inspiration to create. The 45 images showcased at this site, for most, have what it takes.