During the last week of September, 2019, the area where we live in southwestern Alberta was part of a Winter Storm Advisory from Environment Canada. As the weekend drew near, the forecasts and warnings grew more and more ominous, eventually warning residents to prepare for a “historic storm.” Sure enough, it lived up to the hype, with some locations in our region receiving over 100cm(!) by the time the snow quit falling on Monday. Read more
It’s hard to believe we’re already looking back on 2018 and all the memories and moments it held. We missed doing this kind of a post in 2017, so we thought it was definitely time to share some of our favourite moments and images with you from the past couple years. We decided to organize our highlights around a few categories of favourites for Josiah, Jenaya and John: New Print Releases, Memories from the Field, Beauty All Around Us, and our most popular prints amongst our collectors and gallery guests. Read more
He’s done it again! On January 23, 2018, Josiah was named the 2017 Young Outdoor Photographer of the Year! This is the second time Josiah has received this distinction, which marks the first time any photographer has won a category twice in the history of the competition!
It is such an honour for Josiah to be recognized in this highly regarded competition that saw entries from photographers from more than 60 countries this year. Read more
We are so pleased to share that Josiah has been awarded once again in the 2017 Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition (WPY53)! The competition seeks to discover and showcase the world’s best nature photography, and the panel of esteemed judges felt that our young photographer’s black and white image of a monkey moth caterpillar in Thailand was one of the 100 best images from nearly 50,000 they judged from 92 countries! Read more
It’s that time of the year when photographers put together a list of favourite images from the past 12 months. We’ve enjoyed doing the same, but have always struggled with the tension of separating favourite memories and experiences from the images themselves. This year had some pretty crazy developments for our family of wildlife and conservation photographers, so we decided to do something a little different: each of us (John, Jenaya–now 19–and Josiah–now 12) chose one favourite image, one favourite experience, and one bestselling print as chosen by our collectors and gallery clients. Read more
Josiah’s on a roll in terms of international recognition for his wildlife and conservation photography, to say the least! After being named the Young Outdoor Photographer of the Year in January of 2015, he has gone on to be awarded in Por el Planeta, Wildlife Photographer of the Year, and now Bird Photographer of the Year. Read more
Shortly after Josiah became the youngest ever to be named the Young Outdoor Photographer of the Year in January, 2015, we had an intriguing email arrive in our inbox. Steve Watkins, the editor of Outdoor Photography magazine, a premier nature photography periodical based in the U.K., reached out to us about doing a special feature on our family of photographers.
…we are tremendously honoured and more than a little humbled by the resulting feature (which was released in the April, 2016 issue), which we received permission to share here.
This fall the editors of ROM Magazine (the official quarterly magazine of the Royal Ontario Museum) reached out to us about doing a special feature on Josiah and his wildlife photography for their upcoming Winter 2016 Issue. The museum was the first in Canada to open the 2015 Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibit, which features the top-100 awarded images from the competition. As Josiah has two images in the exhibit, they thought it would be nice for their readers to get to know our young wildlife photographer a bit better.
[NOTE: This post is more about sharing a few favourite experiences and their accompanying images than simply sharing a gallery of favourite pics from the year…if you want to skip the stories, you’ll find 10 favourite pictures from each of us on our 2015 Favourites page.]
2015 has been one incredible year for us in the Launstein family! It’s certainly been exciting to see the recognition and awards that Jenaya and Josiah received in the past year, but much more important than the accolades are the moments spent together in the field. Read more
This past summer Jenaya and Josiah both received a pretty exciting email from none other than acclaimed conservation photographer, Cristina Mittermeier. I (John) was in town with Josiah when the email came through, telling us Josiah had been awarded in Por el Planeta, and I reached for my phone to share the news with Jenaya only to read an incoming message from her saying, “Guess what?!?!”
It turns out both my talented young photographers had made it through the thousands of entries (28,578 to be precise) to each have an image awarded as Specially Commended in this prestigious and important competition. Read more
© Josiah Launstein | www.launsteinimagery.com
© John Launstein | www.launsteinimagery.com