Extremely Beautiful Wildlife Photography by Csaba Tökölyi

Csaba Tökölyi is a award winning photographer from Budapest, Hungary. During the last 5 years he received a lot of  photography awards such as:  Underwater Images Festival, Nature Category at The Hungarian Press Association or Submarine Underwater Competition,  just to name a few. We had the privilege to interview him and to share with you the wildlife winning and highly commended images that covers a wide type of nature subject and with an original artistic approach.

• Tell us something about Csaba Tökölyi.

I live in Budapest, Hungary. During the day (and sometimes a little longer) I work as an art director at an advertising agency. I picked up photography as a hobby during school years, and remained a casual snapper for many years. Then I started diving, and my life changed in many ways. My passion for nature photography started underwater. I outgrew my compact pretty fast and got a housing for my Nikon D200 camera. With this setup, my photography evolved and the urge to show my friends the wonderful underwater world was now aided by a very effective tool. Nowadays I use a Nikon D300s. And after a few years, I started to follow the Darwinian path of evolution and ventured out of the water into the realm of land based nature photography...

• What’s your creative process like? / Where do you find inspiration and why you like photography?

I don't really plan my pictures, I don't usually have them in my mind before setting out on a shoot. There are exceptions, of course, but most of the time I find inspiration and ideas from the surroundings and the species I develop affection to. This is mostly true when wandering about in Hungary. Of course, before setting out to remote locations where I have limited time and less knowledge of the surroundings I try to dig up stuff from what I can know from experience and works of others whom I recognize and treasure. As an aftermath of shooting in the field, I try to read about my subjects and not just identify them - not only is it an interesting read, but it also helps with working with them.

• · What are some tips you could give to people that really like your work?

Shoot a lot, and maybe a bit more. Much of the time I find myself wondering during the "developing" process, why I did not do this and that, why I did not try another angle, another setting, etc. The magic in nature photography (in my opinion) comes from the unrepeatability of the moment. This is more than true in underwater photography where time is one of the most limiting factors...

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Mr. Csaba, thank you very much for the opportunity to feature you, on PhotographyOffice website. We are pretty sure that our viewers are already thrilled about the outdoor photography that you create; anyhow it will be a great pleasure to feature you again on a new project and maybe, why not, your favorite underwater photography.

PS: he is very active on twitter at @csabatokolyi