Auckland teenager Cruz Erdmann was among a group of photographers from all over the world to be named Young Wildlife Photographer of the year in 2019.
The competition is run by London's Natural History Museum, which has loaned its exhibition of last year's winning collection to Auckland Museum.
Cruz told Jesse Mulligan his winning photograph of a big fin reef squid was taken two years’ ago in Indonesia, he came across it at night by chance he says.
“I thought it was going to be blurry because of the speed at which I had to take the photo, it was only there for about 2 seconds and then it was gone.
“When I came up and the next day was looking through them on my computer, two of them were much better than I expected.”
His mother encouraged encouraged him to enter the shot in to the competition run by the Natural History Museum.
He says he was announced category winner at a ceremony last October held at the museum in London.
Cruz has always been a keen diver, he says. But it was his dad that introduced him to underwater photography.
“Before then, you see something and when you come up from the dive it’s gone, it can be in your memory but it can never be 100 percent, you can never really truly describe it to someone else and eventually you’ll forget about it.
“So, it was a great way for me to archive things I saw and the first couple of phot s were much better than I expected so that kind of kept me going.”
You can find details of the Auckland Museum exhibition here.
