The Current - The perfect picture took years, but it was worth the wait

Episode Date: October 3, 2025

Liron Gertsman's award winning photo was years in the making. Then he got on a plane and took a boat to get it but it earned him the title of Bird Photographer of the Year out of 33 thousand other photos.

Did you know most people only have three go-to podcasts? Well, we like a challenge. Here are three reasons World Report should be in your top three. One, we wake up early so you don't have to. Our producers are hard at work even before the sun rises. Two, we cover all the news you need from Canada and around the world. And three, the best part, it's just 10 minutes long. You can catch up quickly and still have time for your other favorites.

Follow World Report wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. Picture this. You have spent well over a year planning the photo of your dreams. You're on a boat off the Pacific coast of Mexico. It's a once-in-a-lifetime event, total solar eclipse, and you just have a few minutes to capture the image.

Diamond ring. One. Oh. Woo! Wow. That moment earned Leron Gertzman, the title of the Bird Photographer of the Year. His photo chosen from 33,000 submissions. Learon is on Vancouver, Ireland.

Learon, good morning. Good morning, Matt. Thanks for having me. Congratulations. Thank you so much. What did we just hear? What was going on there? That was actually the exact moment that I captured the photo.

You could hear I have an app running in the background that counted down to the moment called the diamond ring, which is when the edge of the sun reveals itself a tiny bit at the end of the eclipse. And for a few seconds, this total solar eclipse kind of takes on the appearance of a diamond ring. And that was the moment that I captured this photo. Okay. So it's radio. I need you to describe, I'm looking at it right now, but describe what this photo looks like. Yeah, for sure. So this is a photo of an incredible bird called the magnificent frigate bird. It has a great name, too. in front of a total solar eclipse. So a total solar eclipse, for those that aren't familiar, is when the moon briefly passes in front of the sun. It basically turns daytime into nighttime,

but you see the beautiful corona, the atmosphere of the sun. And the magnificent figure bird is the spectacular bird. It's got this huge wingspan. It's teradactal-esque, really long, narrow wings, forked tail, and it's passing right in front of this total solar eclipse, specifically the moment known as the diamond ring. Tell me how you, started to think about this idea. There's a, I mean, photographers don't take photos, they make photos. This is an example of somebody making a photo. When did the idea for this come around? Yeah, honestly, it's been, it's been a long time coming. I've, I've long been super into bird photography. I mean, bird and wildlife photography is my career. And around high school,

I'd already been photographing birds for a long time, but I had a science teacher who really got me into astronomy with an astronomy unit. It just fascinated me. His name was Mr. Prossack. And at that point, I started thinking about taking more photos of the night sky, of celestial events. Fast forward many years. And I was like, well, one really cool celestial phenomenon is a total solar eclipse, very rare, very, you know, takes some dedication to go photograph. What if I combined my passion for bird photography with my passion for, you know, space and astrophotography? and I decided it would be so cool to try to photograph a bird in front of something like a total solar eclipse. So when do you start to think this is where I want to be? This is where I need to be at this exact moment.

How long were you planning this one shot? It was probably something I'd been dreaming about for like at least a couple years, but I spent well over like a year and a half specifically planning this very shot. Basically, I was looking at the upcoming total solar eclipses. They occur about once every 18 months. on average. But when they occur, they only happen on a very narrow path across the world known as the line of totality or the path of totality. And it's very specific. So if you're not willing to travel to go see one, you're probably going to be waiting hundreds of years to see one where you happen to be. So I was looking at the paths of totality for the upcoming eclipses and thinking about, okay, which one of these crosses over an area that might have

an abundance of birds in a way that I could actually have some chance of getting a photo of a bird with this eclipse, and the April 8, 2024 eclipse crossed the Pacific coast of Mexico. And that region was super appealing because, first of all, there's a lot of seabirds there, which I knew. And second of all, it's a region that on average has pretty good weather, which meant that I wasn't too likely to have to worry about things like cloud cover rooting the shot. The cloud cover is one thing, but you do have to have birds that are there, right? You need the bird to make the photo.

Yes, yes, absolutely. And in order to kind of get the highest chance of that possible, I identified some little islands off the coast of Mazatlan that seemed just from all of my extensive internet research over a year, seems like they would have a lot of seabirds on them. And then when I arrived in Mexico, about a week before the eclipse, I began just studying these islands. And every evening, there would be large numbers of magnificent frigate birds and other species that would fly into them to roost. So my theory was that during the eclipse, when it gets dark, the birds will think it's night time. They'll fly into the island to roost. So I enlisted the help of a small boat to kind of position near these islands where, you know, we would be underneath the bird streaming into the islands. What's going through your mind as that countdown is underway when you're going to get to the point of total eclipse?

You know, I think I was really in the moment. Definitely was like a little nervous leading up to it. but when you're pursuing these sorts of really challenging and ambitious photo ideas, you have to enjoy it. You have to be willing to accept that it may or may not happen because if it was easy, then it wouldn't be so special, right? So I was pretty in the moment. I was pretty in awe and leading up to the moment that totality was beginning, it was starting to get dark. I could see the birds coming in and I could really see the photo that I'd been dreaming about starting to come together in front of my own eyes. Did you know when you clicked the shutter? I mean, I'm sure you took

a few, but did you know that you had it? I was pretty sure, yes. We were really positioned in the perfect spot, which wasn't a coincidence. We'd actually done like practice runs on other days and that sort of thing. And, you know, I have been photographing birds for basically my entire life. So I was, you know, I'm pretty comfortable with the camera. So the main, kind of variable that needed to go right was just we were in the right spot at the right time and the clouds weren't blocking the sun and all those things went right and so by the time the eclipse was over I was pretty confident I had gotten the shot I was looking for but of course until you actually you know sit back open up the photos and look at them you don't know for sure it's amazing

it's an amazing shot and it's not just the only I mean you you take a lot of photos of birds but it's not just birds right it's a lot of different kinds of wildlife including tell me about this photo of the bear and the salmon? Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I really credit my love for photography and for nature with this part of the world that I've been so lucky to live in. I've born and raised in Vancouver, and I still live in Vancouver, I'm on Vancouver Island at the moment because this is the salmon run season. It's an incredible time with so many animals coming to feast on the salmon, and that does include bears. And whenever I'm thinking about capturing photos, I'm trying to think of things that tell a story. And I think no story is so special to this part of the world as the annual feast of

animals like bears on salmon. They're in the rivers. They're catching the salmon. It's a really important food source for them as they prepare for hibernation. And it's a part of this big interconnected ecosystem where the bears catch the salmon. They eat them in the forest. The salmon fertilizes the forest. And I wanted to capture a photo that best captured this whole ecosystem in one image. And what I came up with was a photo that's half above water, half under water with the bear above the water and the salmon underneath the water all in one photo with the beautiful rainforest in the background. It's an astonishing image. I don't know. I don't know that we could take another hour to talk about how you got this. But again, that's one of those

think about what you want and cross your fingers and work really hard, but hope that you manage to kind of capture the image that you see in your mind. Totally, totally. And those sorts of photos are also just the culmination of a lot of planning and time as well. I spend so much time outside here because I do work full time as a nature guide and a wildlife photography guide running kind of tours and workshops in Western Canada and beyond. So I have a really, you know, a good knowledge of the various places where the salmon are spawning and all that. But even when you have, you know, the location in mind, it took several days to find the perfect spot in the perfect river to set up a camera. And this was actually a remote camera that I just had running for many days for

three or four days, just constantly taking photos, waiting for the moments that bear walked by as the salmon was swimming by. Incredible. You know, yesterday, just before I let you go, we spent a lot of time yesterday remembering Jane Goodall, and we played an interview that I had done with her a couple of years ago, and a lot of that, and her work was about creating in people like an affection for the natural world. And the belief was that if people were able to develop that affection, that they might, stand up and help protect that world. Do you see the same kind of thing in the work that you're doing

in terms of giving people a sense of the beauty of the natural world with a larger purpose? Absolutely. And I think this is one of the things that makes photography so important. Not just professionals like myself, but really anyone who wields a camera. And these days, that is pretty much everyone who has a cell phone in their pocket because obviously there's a lot of problems in the natural world. There's a lot of issues that need to be fixed. a lot of species and habit that are in trouble, a lot of habitat loss. But with photography, we can capture photos that make people care, that maybe show people something that they wouldn't otherwise have known about.

And if we take really beautiful photos, you know, my hope is that people see those photos and they'll maybe want to learn more and protect this incredible natural world that we're so lucky to live on. There's a long game in the work that you do. Are you starting already to plan your next images? Oh, always, always. I'm very much a planner. I think it goes along with my profession of not just being a photographer, but also somebody who like plans photography trips and expeditions. So I'm always planning way ahead, dreaming up ideas and trying to figure out what I can do next. It's, the photos are remarkable. And I don't know what one gets for bird photographer of the year, aside from acclaim and attention and hopefully, maybe camera equipment or something like that. But it's a huge honor. Congratulations. Thank you so much, Matt. And thanks so much for having me.

on. Laron Gertzman is a wildlife photographer. He was on Vancouver Island. His image from Mexico during the total eclipse won him, the Bird Photographer of the Year award. Again, that photo chosen from some 33,000 submissions. You can see the photo on our website. Go to cbc.ca.ca. slash the current current image. This has been the current podcast. You can hear our show Monday to Friday on CBC Radio 1 at 8.30 a.m. at all time zones. So you can also listen online at cbc.ca.ca slash the current or on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.