Eric Hosking Award - Winner, A marvel of ants
The aim of this award is to encourage talented young photographers aged
18 to 26. It is given for a portfolio of six images representing the
photographer's best work.
When Bence first tried to photograph leaf-cutter ants in action, he thought it was going to be easy. It wasn't, but relishing the challenge, he found out as much as he could about their complex society and spent hours watching and following them in the Costa Rican rainforest.
"They proved to be wonderful subjects," says Bence, who discovered that they were most active at night. He would follow a column as it fanned out into the forest. Each line terminated at a tree, shrub or bush. "The variation in the size of the pieces they cut was fascinating - sometimes small ants seemed to carry huge bits, bigger ones just small pieces."
Of his winning shot, he says, "I love the contrast between the simplicity of the shot itself and the complexity of the behaviour." Lying on the ground to take the shot, he also discovered the behaviour of chiggers (skin-digesting mite larvae), which covered him in bites.
When Bence first tried to photograph leaf-cutter ants in action, he thought it was going to be easy. It wasn't, but relishing the challenge, he found out as much as he could about their complex society and spent hours watching and following them in the Costa Rican rainforest.
"They proved to be wonderful subjects," says Bence, who discovered that they were most active at night. He would follow a column as it fanned out into the forest. Each line terminated at a tree, shrub or bush. "The variation in the size of the pieces they cut was fascinating - sometimes small ants seemed to carry huge bits, bigger ones just small pieces."
Of his winning shot, he says, "I love the contrast between the simplicity of the shot itself and the complexity of the behaviour." Lying on the ground to take the shot, he also discovered the behaviour of chiggers (skin-digesting mite larvae), which covered him in bites.
