Wildlife Photographer of the Year - Rising star
Audio description
Transcript
This is ‘Rubies and Gold’ by Sage Ono from the USA. This photograph was taken at San Carlos Beach in Monterey, California in the USA. It is the lead image in a series of six images, in which Sage explores the abundant life around the giant kelp forests in Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. It is the 2024 category winner of the ‘Rising Star Award’. The entire background is black, with the exception of the top left-hand section, where the light is dancing off these serrated edges of the kelp front. The light on this is like a string of pearls dangling down. And then from that point, in the top left-hand corner, your attention is drawn towards yellow cable-like plant structures that connect to one another with these out of focus blurry structures that look like yellow maracas. At the different junctions where these yellow cables connect, you have numerous beautifully purple little bits of Jelly, almost suspended there, glowing in the white light. They are in big clusters, and they are fish eggs. The purple is startling. Set against the single tones of blacks and yellows. It is like a modern art piece. It is very simple, and you can break it down into three things. You've got the reflected, serrated edges of the leaf, you've got the yellow junction like cables of the plant, and then you've got the eggs. What is also lit up throughout the whole image are these tiny white flecks, almost like dust. That is kind of indicative of where kelp forests around California have quite cold waters, where you have these particles of other animals and other plants that the sea has just reclaimed. The tiny particles are sinking down and will settle. May be to be eaten by the animals that you find in these kelp forests. These tiny particles remind us that there's a much wider world around this very intimate, very singular scene.