The 2019 Tom Oliver Award, for the creation of educational resources specifically targeting bird photography, was won by Con Boekel who submitted a photo essay "Bird Photography for What?".

Our 2017 TOA winner, Georgina Steytler, presented the 2019 Award Certificate to Con during our Biennial Conference in Fremantle.

This photo essay is now available here.

The Tom Oliver Award is a Special BirdLife Photography Award established in 2014, in honour of a dedicated BirdLife Photography member, Tom Oliver, whose passion for bird photography and in-depth knowledge of the technical aspects of this photographic genre were enthusiastically shared with anyone who sought his company.  Sadly, Tom is no longer with us, but his zeal for educating others lives on through the Tom Oliver Award.  This perpetual award has been made possible by a generous bequest to BirdLife Photography from Tom’s wife, Di Oliver.  BirdLife Photography extends its gratitude to Di Oliver for her generosity.

The Tom Oliver Award is currently offered bi-annually; the inaugural Award was made in 2015.  It seeks to entice photographers and/or photography-educators to create an original and inspiring educational resource enabling bird photographers to advance their photographic knowledge-base and technical competencies. This definition is deliberately broad to encourage lateral thinking and innovation by award entrants.  These resources should promote best practice in photographic techniques and could include aspects such as:

• photographing small birds
• photographing birds in flight
• capturing interesting behaviours
• compositional elements
• post-production techniques and workflows
• ethics in bird photography

Our President, Tim Van Leeuwen, has put together a short video in which Jen Carr, the Tom Oliver Award coordinator, and three past winners, Georgina Steytler, Brian O'Leary and Con Boekel, answer a series of questions about the award and their entries.  We hope this will inspire you to submit an entry for a future award.

Our inaugural award presented to Brian O’Leary provides an example of a high quality entry.  It comprised an illustrated e-book describing a technique to attract and photograph birds at close quarters using medium format telephoto lenses, and an accompanying video presentation of photos and videos captured by the technique.

The 2017 Tom Oliver Award, for the creation of educational resources specifically targeting bird photography, was won by Georgina Steytler - Wild and Endangered -  who submitted an e-book "The Art of Bird Photography".  The sub-title tells what it's about - 10 inspirational ideas to help you turn common birds into Art.

The 2019 Tom Oliver Award was won by Con Boekel, for his Photo Essay "Bird Photography for What?",  This work adresses issues that bird photographers might care to consider while engaging in their profession/pastime.

The 2022 Tom Oliver Award was won by Keith Ross-Jones, for his article "Digital Photography Myths".

The 2017 Tom Oliver Award, for the creation of educational resources specifically targeting bird photography, was won by Georgina Steytler - Wild and Endangered -  who submitted an e-book "The Art of Bird Photography".  The sub-title tells what it's about - 10 inspirational ideas to help you turn common birds into Art.

This e-book is now available here.

You'll find lots more of interest on Georgina's website.

1. The Organiser of the Award is BirdLife Photography, a Special Interest Group of BirdLife Australia, ACN 149 124 774.
2. Submission of an entry for the Award is deemed to indicate acceptance of these Rules & Conditions.
3. Entry is open to anyone living in Australia.  Entry is also open to overseas members of BirdLife Australia or Birdlife Photography.  Any person involved in the administration or judging of the Award, or any member of that person’s immediate family, is not eligible for the Award.
4. Each entry must include a completed Tom Oliver Award entry form.
5. There as a single category for entries, which is open to persons of any age. The prize is $1,000 (AUD) and a laser engraved crystal award.
6. Entries for the 2024 Award must be lodged between 20^th November 2023 and 29^th February 2024.
7. The work submitted for the Award must be an original work that has not been previously published in a nationally circulated publication (except in BirdLife Australia publications), or made available on-line except on the BirdLife Photography or BirdLife Australia websites
8. An Entrant may submit as many entries as they wish.  There is no entry fee.
9. Entries may be in any form, e.g. a series of short YouTube video presentations, an e-book, a written article for a magazine, screen capture of software use, etc.  There is no stipulation as to the form or format of entries for the Award.  An entry consisting solely of a portfolio of bird photographs is NOT acceptable as an entry for the Tom Oliver Award.
10.  Entries should be emailed to: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
11. All entries are deemed to be received at the time of receipt by the Organiser, and not at the time of posting by the Entrant.
12. The Organiser accepts no responsibility for late, lost or misdirected entries, or entries not received by the Organiser for any reason whatsoever.
    

    Criteria for Entries

13. Whilst creating their entries, Entrants must not do anything which in any way injures or causes distress to birds or animals, or destroys their habitat.
14. Entrants are responsible for ensuring full compliance with any applicable national or international legislation and for securing any relevant permits that may be required.
15. Any person appearing in a presentation must have given their permission to appear; this permission must be made available on request by the Organiser.
16. All information supplied with an entry must be complete, true and accurate.  Disguising or misrepresenting the origin of a work/entry will constitute a breach of the Rules, and that entry will be ineligible for the Award.
    

    Judging

17. A judging panel will be appointed by the Organiser to select the Award winners.  The Award winners will be selected on the basis of artistic and technical merit, clarity of presentation to general bird photographers, ease of distribution, innovation and the entry's ability to improve the viewer's bird photography techniques.  Judges for the 2024 award will be Tim Van Leeuwin, Mary Wheeler and Jen Carr.
18. The winner will be selected on the basis of artistic and technical merit, clarity of presentation to general bird photographers, ease of distribution, innovation and the entrants ability to improve the viewer's bird photography techniques.
19. In the event a winner is declared, the winner will be announced at the BirdLife Photography Biennial Conference 2024.
20. The judging panel may select other entries for special awards or commendations.
21. In the event that the award is without an entry of sufficient merit, the Organiser reserves the right not to present the award on this occasion
    

    Intellectual Property Rights

22. Each entry must be the original work of the Entrant and must not infringe the rights of any other party.
23. The Entrant must either be the sole owner of the copyright in the material, including any images, or have secured the written permission of the copyright owner(s), or all joint copyright owners, to enter the material and/or image(s) into the Competition.  A written copy of any such permission must be supplied to the Organiser on request.
24. In the event that an Entrant is not the sole copyright owner of the material or images, the Entrant agrees to notify the Organiser at the date of submission, providing the names of all copyright owners.
25. Ownership of the copyright in all material and images submitted to the Competition will remain with the copyright owner(s).
26. Entrants grant the Organiser the non-exclusive right to use the material submitted for the Award for any purpose which the Organiser chooses, with no payment for use of that material.  The Organiser will provide due credit to the Entrant when such material is used.  The Entrant agrees that the Organiser will not be liable to the Entrant in the event of inadvertent omission of credit.
    

    Publicity

27. Entrants agree that if their entry wins the Award, they will participate in related publicity and agree to the use of their name and likeness for the purposes of advertising, promotion and publicity of the Award without additional compensation.

    Liability

28. The Organiser cannot be held responsible for entries that are not received and cannot accept liability for any loss of or damage to any material entered for the Award howsoever caused or for any other loss or damage as a result.

The 2015 Tom Oliver Award, for the creation of educational resources specifically targeting bird photography, was won by Brian O’Leary, who submitted a booklet with detailed instructions on how to attract birds to close quarters for quality photography using medium focal length telephoto lenses, and an accompanying video presentation of photos and videos captured by the technique.

The e-book is now available here.  You can download either a web quality version (477 kB filesize), or a print quality version (8 MB filesize).

The associated video can be viewed from this link: https://vimeo.com/133536214

Tom Oliver: the man, as seen through the eyes of two BirdLife Photography members.

I first met Tom at a Birdlife Photography meeting held in Gluepot.  He came down from Brisbane with his partner Di to appear as one of the guest speakers for the occasion. Brisbane to Gluepot I thought, that's a long way to come. As one of the local Birdlife members observed before his arrival – "he must be bloody enthusiastic" – which isn't a bad summary of him at all.

Some folk have the knack of making you feel like you've known them for years, just minutes after meeting them. So it was with Tom and Di.  Tom's conversation swiftly roamed from: RAW processing techniques (“why would anyone want to throw away all the advantages of RAW processing without a really good reason?”); to the stance one should adopt when using long lenses (“minimise the shock of the shutter release moving up the lens tube by carefully cupping your hand against it"); to what bird pose makes for the most pleasing image. Tom's favourite bird stance was with the bird facing away, but looking back towards the photographer.

Tom would carry his 500 mm lens, carbon tripod, and back pack for miles, just to ensure that he could do justice to any bird that came his way, remarking that "you shouldn't waste your opportunities", which is good advice and not only applies to photography.

Watching Tom talk to people, I found his patience and helpfulness extraordinarily. Enthusiasm is contagious and Tom had plenty of it.  He was pleased to share his thoughts on three aspects of bird photography that deliver fine results. The first – camera craft, this ensures that you capture images which are as sharp as possible.  Secondly – bird craft, this helps to avoid pictures of birds simply reacting to your presence or a played-back bird call. Tom was particularly pleased with shots that showed interesting behaviour and his own pictures along this line are really memorable. Lastly, Tom had a great understanding of the effective use of post-production and promoted this in his column "Improving your image", which was a favourite of mine, as was the man himself.

Vale, Tom. May your enthusiasm and the knowledge that you shared, live on in your award.

Les Peters – South Australia

Tom and I joined Birds Queensland at the same time, around 6 years ago.  We met on organised outings and campouts and a few of our own photographic outings.

Tom was keen to help on any aspects of photography.  He taught me simple things like how to stand with my monopod to reduce movement, through to complex post-processing tasks. He took the time to post-process photos that I sent to him and he showed me how to make the most of each image.  I asked many questions that he was only too willing to answer.

At a stall we manned for Birds Queensland at an environmental day, Tom spent a great deal of time with a young birder showing him how to get the best out of his field guide and answering any of his questions.  Tom really had a passion for getting the young involved in birding and bird photography.

The newsletter that he created was full of helpful articles that mostly he produced and his images for critique articles were a particularly useful learning tool.

I know he had more to give and it is our loss that he is no longer with us.

Julie Sarna – Queensland