cultureAUGUST09
21
The call of
natureBarbara Hodgson turns the focus on the talents
of Miguel Lasa, a winner in The Wildlife
Photographer of the Year competition.
T
alk about suffering for your art. Miguel
Lasa certainly isn't complaining but
suffering is the only word to describe
what he goes through in order to
capture the most extraordinary photographs.
Take, for instance, his recent award-winner
image of a polar bear.
What at first glance appears to be a blaze of
light in a night sky is in fact the outline of a polar
bear silhouetted against the first rays of golden
sunlight.
Togettheshot�inafleetingmoment�Miguel
endured 10 freezing, dark days in a bus on the
snow-covered Canadian tundra, eating and
sleeping in close confines with a bunch of then-
strangers.
"We weren't allowed to go on the ground as
the bears � they look cute and beautiful � are
extremely dangerous and would kill people,"
extreme environments, including temperatures
so low his camera batteries went dead and
"even the polar bears were cold".
But such commitment over the years is how
the wildlife lover has built up such an impressive
portfolio of photographs.
Born in Madrid, he always loved to be outside
as a boy, he says.
Initially it was the Farne Islands and birdlife
that caught Miguel's artistic eye when he first
arrived in the UK to work as a doctor.
"I'd been taking pictures for many years,
mostlylandscapes,andwhenIcametoEngland
14 years ago I got more interested in wildlife.
"Over here I noticed everything was much
greener and the wildlife was different as well.
"I got a camera and a big lens and would go
to the Farne Islands and Northumberland.
"Then I started travelling around the world to
points out Miguel, a doctor from Teesside.
"So we spent the whole 10 days on the bus,
sleeping there, eating there � it was claus-
trophobic and very hard."
Sowasitworthit?Well,hispicture,whichhe's
called Polar Sunrise, speaks for itself. It won the
Creative Visions of Nature category of The
Wildlife Photographer of the Year annual com-
petition and is currently on display at the Great
North Museum in Newcastle.
Spanish-born Miguel is delighted at his suc-
cess in the prestigious competition which at-
tracted a record 32,351 entries from 82
countries.
As a busy doctor at a family practice in
Hartlepool, photography is just a hobby, al-
though every chance he gets he'll pack his
cameras � he has three and lots of different
lenses � and spend his holidays in far-flung
locations such as Africa or Alaska, perhaps
photographing lions or bald eagles or braving
different locations to take pictures of birds and
landscapes."
He won a photographic competition about
four years ago and asked if he could swap his
prize � a picture-taking trip to Tanzania � for one
to Canada.
"I'd always wanted to go to see the polar
bears," he says. "They said ok but it was more
expensive so I paid a bit to top it up and I was
able to go."
It's at Churchill in Canada's Hudson Bay that
hundreds of hungry bears gather each autumn,
waiting impatiently for the ice to freeze suf-
ficiently over the sea to take their weight so they
can start their winter seal hunting.
So stunned was Miguel by his first sight of the
magnificent creatures, some of them with their
babies, that he failed to take any pictures at
all.
"It was just amazing to see them in the wild:
this is their playing ground." While the bears

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