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Frederikke Hejbøl Jensen
@thefrederikkejensen
Best of the week 42 at #nomadict 2020
I thought I’d just start off by introducing myself; My name is Frederikke; I’m 20 years old; I live in Denmark and I have been taking photos for about 2.5 years. I grew up in a small village in Southwest Denmark, in the middle of nowhere really. I have always been surrounded by nature and a plethora of different wild animals. Growing up where I did definitely made me fall in love with nature and in particular its furry inhabitants.
My passion for photography came quite late in my life; I was 17 when I bought my first camera and what inspired me to take photos was seeing all of these epic landscape photos on Instagram. I was left completely speechless. I couldn’t believe that they were real; someone actually made that. This was such a pivotal moment in my life; I was so inspired, but also very excited and motivated to try something new. A couple months later I had saved enough money to buy my very first camera (a Nikon d7200) at the beginning of 2018.
Even though it were those incredible landscape photos that inspired me to pick up photography I sadly didn’t have access to any landscapes even remotely similar. Instead, I started photographing what I did have access to; that being the different kinds of wildlife in and around my grandparents’ garden.
"I very quickly fell in love with wildlife photography and I would spend hours outside waiting for deer, hares, foxes and pheasants."
After seeing the incredible photos Konsta Punkka @kpunkka and Ossi Saarinen @soosseli had taken in Finland, I really wanted to visit Finland myself. So, I did. After graduating high school, I bought a ticket to Helsinki. While I was there, I explored the many different forests in and around Helsinki. Here I saw a myriad of squirrels and different kinds of birds – many of them trusted me enough to eat straight out of my hand, something I had never experienced before. Whilst I was there, I also had the pleasure of meeting Ossi Saarinen @soosseli and Paavo Penttinen @paavopenttinen who were kind enough to show me different places around Helsinki which were frequented by moose, deer and foxes.
"My all-time favorite animal is the beautiful and elusive red fox and before going to Finland I had never seen one up close, let alone get a decent photo of one."
That was until we saw a fox cub at one of the local golf courses. When we first saw him, he was sleeping and after a while he woke up, fortunately he wasn’t bothered by our presence at all, so he stuck around and posed for our cameras for a while before he eventually ran off. This was such an unforgettable moment and definitely something that had a major impact on me as a wildlife photographer; it really motivated me to keep photographing wildlife and maybe even one day make a career out of it.
"The story behind my winning shot starts at 2am on a cold morning back in May."
In the middle of the corona-lockdown 10 adorable fox cubs were born to a gorgeous vixen – the one I was fortunate enough to capture in my winning photo. I had seen a plethora of photos of these cute fox cubs and I really wanted to photograph them myself. I woke up at 2am, after only an hour of sleep and then we drove for about 3 hours until we got to the fox den, just before sunrise around 5am.
To our dismay no foxes came out at sunrise. We waited by the den for about 8 hours before the first cubs came out of the den. Unfortunately, I only have a 120-300mm lens and they were too far away to get a decent shot. But luckily, after a while they got braver and came closer. While I was lying on the ground, one of the cubs jumped the trench separating the den from the road and came up to me. He was only about two meters away and for the very first time, I was very happy that my lens didn’t have a fixed focal length.
WINNING PHOTOGRAPH
BEST OF THE WEEK 42
After he had posed for me, he and his siblings went back into their den. When we were about to leave, I spotted the vixen on the other side of the trench. She was very fixated on something in the trench, so she didn’t really mind me photographing her. Which is always what you hope for – but rarely what you get as a wildlife photographer.
It made me realize what I want to do with my life, and it has given me a way to be creative, not only with finding different compositions, but especially in the post processing. The way you edit your photos is what sets you apart from the rest. My editing style is quite dark, moody and quite desaturated. When I edit, I love using vignettes to really draw attention to my subject as that is the main event of the photo and what I want you to focus on.
"I really love how the post processing allows me to change the mood and the feeling of the photo."
Probably what I love most about photography is how I can capture a moment – you would otherwise only be able to experience outside and then bring that moment with me inside. I really hope my photos inspire people to protect our nature and respect its inhabitants. Moving forward, some of my goals for the future are to keep challenging myself by meeting new people, visiting new places and most importantly keep working towards my goal becoming a full-time wildlife photographer.
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