The winners on the Sony World Pictures Awards 2026 have been revealed, and as soon as once more the distinguished contest, which this yr attracted 430,000 entries from over 200 international locations and territories, was filled with unimaginable pictures and tales.
I used to be lucky to get a sneak preview of the exhibition — which is open to the general public at Somerset Home in London till Could 4, 2026 — and its 300 plus works, to listen to from the ten class winners and attend the glitzy award ceremony. And better of all, I had the chance to take a seat down with the Wildlife class winner Will Burrard-Lucas to debate his ‘Crossing Level’ sequence created in Kenya’s Masai Mara nationwide park.
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‘For nocturnal creatures, there’s nothing higher than digital camera traps’
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(Picture credit score: © Will Burrard-Lucas)(Picture credit score: © Will Burrard-Lucas)(Picture credit score: © Will Burrard-Lucas)
Will Burrard-Lucas’ wildlife pictures is captured utilizing a wide range of setups, from daytime shoots with Sony mirrorless digital camera gear in hand, to digital camera traps paired with ‘outdated secondhand DSLRs’ and left in place for lengthy intervals — the latter was his method to the ‘Crossing Level’ undertaking.
Low-cost path cams are perfect for recording wildlife, however the picture high quality is usually poor and never detailed sufficient to differentiate particular animals. Burrard-Lucas, however, makes use of top-quality digital camera gear, paired along with his self-developed digital camera entice system.
Burrard-Lucas’ digital camera traps are his personal ‘Camtraptions’ units, and are based mostly on a extremely superior movement sensor — the newest model being the fruits of years of growth — which works with a variety of main digital cameras for wired or wi-fi operation.
For this undertaking, Burrard-Lucas wirelessly paired the movement sensor with a full-frame Canon EOS 6D DSLR digital camera (fitted with a 35mm lens), which in flip remotely triggered three off-camera flashguns. As he tells me, “Any outdated DSLR digital camera works very well within the digital camera entice setup — it [the camera] must work effectively with flash, which is the place quite a lot of mirrorless cameras fall down.”
He had entry to closed-off areas of the nationwide park the place there are a focus of notably uncommon wildlife species, together with rhino — that are notoriously shy. A brook surrounded by lush vegetation was the stage for the important undertaking, an uncommon setting for a park sometimes recognized for its broad open plains. “The second I noticed it, I knew it was the precise place,” Burrard-Lucas says.
The digital camera was fastened to a tripod and shielded from the weather and was left in place for greater than six months; the composition that you just see was determined on the very starting with a number of concerns. The movement sensor is positioned to set off the digital camera when the animal steps into the particular a part of the body, and the digital camera’s focus is manually set to that spot, with off-camera lighting able to illuminate it in low gentle.
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With such a undertaking, Burrard-Lucas would not want the newest digital camera gear with blazing quick capturing speeds and AI topic detection autofocus. No, he wants ‘dependable’ and ‘strong’ gear with wonderful picture high quality, and in addition that is inexpensive given the variety of digital camera traps he units up and the environments he works in. Each time he sees low cost “outdated secondhand DSLRs, I snap them up,” he tells me.
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Wildlife photographer Will Burrard-Lucas standing by his SWPA 2026-winning photographs on the contest’s exhibition in Somerset Home, London(Picture credit score: Future / Tim Coleman)(Picture credit score: Future / Tim Coleman)
Lots of the species that the park was notably eager to get extra knowledge on are shy, nocturnal creatures, particularly rhino. As such, lighting is essential, and there are three flashguns positioned to illuminated the topic and fast surrounding vegetation.
With the setup in place, Burrard-Lucas had skilled the rangers to make a weekly test on the gear, change batteries and obtain the photographs from the digital camera’s reminiscence card, recent for an additional week of motion-triggered seize.
The rangers believed a single rhino to be resident within the space, however over following months have been stunned to determine eight totally different beasts. But it was one other discovery that left them ‘surprised’ — when a kudu entered the brook at some point. Kudu may be present in different components of Kenya, however till these distinctive nighttime pictures revealed their presence that they had not been thought to dwell within the Masai Mara nationwide park.
For photographing nocturnal creatures, there’s nothing higher than digital camera traps
Will Burrard-Lucas
“You may by no means predict what is going on to point out up,” says Burrard-Lucas, however over the course of six months his digital camera photographed a variety of wildlife, from rhino to leopard, elephant, giraffe, the shock kudu and lots of extra.
For me, the fun of pictures is being there and experiencing what I am photographing within the second, so I used to be eager to listen to how this various method of setting the stage forward of time for distant seize differed to when he is out with the digital camera in hand, reacting to what he is seeing earlier than him.
“They each have their place for various species and totally different tasks”, says Burrard-Lucas, “however for me, for nocturnal creatures, there’s nothing higher than digital camera traps, as a result of actually it comes right down to lighting.
“For these elusive animals, a photographer may wait 12 hours, however you’ll be able to’t wait 4 months, so it is the one sensible method once you’ve received this outlined focus.” For different creatures that do not stick with trails or are sometimes out in broad open savannahs, a digital camera entice is far much less useful.
I ask Burrard-Lucas about digital camera entice pictures for inexperienced persons, and he tells me, “It is tremendous straightforward, and so many individuals are making new use of their outdated DSLR digital camera. You do not want quite a lot of further equipment; the sensor, a single flash to begin with, maintain issues easy and go away it out for a couple of nights.”
I’d simply do this digital camera entice setup for myself; Burrard-Lucas sells each merchandise wanted for it barring the digital camera on his Camtraptions web site, which additionally supplies an in-depth how-to. Whether or not I can {photograph} something as thrilling as a rhino is a unique matter, in fact — however you need to begin someplace.
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