St Albans schoolboy wins RSPCA wildlife photography award (From St Albans & Harpenden Review)

St Albans schoolboy wins RSPCA wildlife photography award

1:05pm Wednesday 21st December 2011 in Exhibitions By Melanie Dakin

A frog basking in a pond, snapped by 12-year-old St Albans schoolboy Louis Cassidy, has won the first-ever garden wildlife category in the RSPCA's Young Photographer Awards.

Louis, who attends Sandringham School plucked the picture, titled Relaxed Frog, from his collection of images and submitted it for the competition.

"When I took the picture I was quite young, maybe seven or eight," recalls Louis. "Now it's been picked out it's given me confidence to take more pictures.

"There are woods about five minutes away from our house with lots of wildlife in. It's very rewarding if you get a good picture as wildlife moves around so much.

"It took ages to wait for the frog to be in the right place for the photograph, right in the middle," says Louis. “I like frogs. I have loved animals since I was really young, so I like watching them and taking pictures of them."

Louis tells me his dad, a teacher at St Albans School, is a keen photographer too. Self-taught, Louis has been snapping away since the age of six but uses a regular compact camera. He received his trophy at an awards ceremony held in the Tower of London on December 16. Louis is eagerly awaiting the arrival of his prize, a nestbox camera system, which he plans to use to capture images of the abundant birdlife in his garden.

The garden wildlife category was introduced for the first time this year and was judged by wildlife presenter and filmmaker Simon King OBE, who presented the awards. He says of Louis' picture: “It is not just that this picture is so aesthetically pleasant but that it has so many layers to it - it really tells a story in a single image.

“It looks like the frog is sitting on a leaf, and then you notice that it is really a reflection on the water around the frog. When you look even closer you see that it is not even the reflection of a leaf, but the reflection of a garden parasol that is the colour and shape of a leaf.

“A truly amazing picture with so much depth - I could stare at it for hours. Incredible that it was taken by one so young."

Details: www.rspca.org.uk/ypa