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Exhibition Member Highlights
Golden Shoreline Melody
About the image
This is one of the first photographs that made me fall in love with photography. Every year, my family and I go down to our family house in Nature's Valley, and every evening I sit on the rocks to watch the sunset and the waves roll in. If I'm lucky, I spot seals, White-fronted Plovers, terns, and all kinds of little creatures in the rock pools, but the ones I actively look for, the ones that get me most excited, are the oystercatchers pacing up and down the rocks. Since that first afternoon, I've returned again and again to sit among the rocks, watch the oystercatchers come home to roost, and watch the sun go down. Nature's Valley holds a special place in my heart, and this photograph is my way of sharing both my love for wildlife and my love for this place.
SPECIES:
African Oyster Catcher
How it was captured
Canon EOS 700D with an EF 75-300mm canon lens
Photographer:
Age:
From:
Milla Du Preez
22
Gauteng
About the photographer
My love for photography began in my final year of high school, and I fell completely in love with it almost overnight. From that point on, I couldn't walk past a butterfly, a bird, or any creature going about its day without wanting to capture it. That curiosity has never really left me. I'm drawn to wildlife and the natural world in all its forms, the small, overlooked moments as much as the dramatic ones. There's something in an animal's stillness, or the way light falls across a landscape at the end of the day, that I find endlessly worth chasing. For me, photography is where my artistic side gets to breathe. It's how I share just how much I love nature and the outdoors with people who might never stand where I stood or see what I saw. But it's also personal in a quieter way. When I'm behind the camera, my mind switches off. The noise fades, and I'm simply present, lost in the tranquillity of the moment. That feeling is really what keeps me coming back, camera in hand, every time.0
PHOTOGRAPHER'S QUOTE
I don't photograph wildlife to capture it. I photograph it to stay a little longer.
CONSERVATION MESSAGE
The African Oystercatcher is found nowhere else on Earth, and its recovery from Near Threatened to Least Concern shows what's possible when we give wildlife the space it needs. This photographs is a reminder that coastal moments are still fragile and still ours to protect.