Ordinarily when you take a picture at night, you want to reduce the darkness and illuminate the scene as much as possible. Yet to my mind, that needn't always be the priority. Sometimes, drama trumps detail. And above you can see a very good example.
This one of the images from Michiel van Noppen's Fritz Pölking Prize-winning series, Tales of the Forest Keepers, about a conservation project in the Costa Rican rainforest.
In pitch darkness at 17 minutes past midnight, a Baird's tapir is being treated for infestation of screwworms – a species of parasitic blowfly whose larvae feed on the living flesh of warm-blooded animals.
The tapir's head is crossed with scars and there's a large, open wound. To treat it, a gloved, tattooed arm reaches in from the left, while a headtorch blazes straight into the lens. It's not a pretty sight, but this isn't grossness for grossness's sake. There's a serious point to be made.
Tapirs are especially vulnerable to screwworm. Pushed out of the shrinking rainforest, they're now often seen crossing yards and cattle pastures, typically carrying bite wounds.
It's a frustrating situation, because screwworms were actually eradicated from Costa Rica for more than 40 years, yet illegal livestock trafficking across Central America has recently heralded their return.
How it was shot
This dramatic scene was shot on a Canon EOS R6 with an RF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM at 37mm. The settings were 1/25 sec at f/5.6 and ISO 8000, in manual, with flash. The recorded focus distance was 1.31m.
The combination of high ISO, slow shutter speed and flash is a smart one. The flash does the heavy lifting on the subject and freezes it, while the longer exposure and high ISO enable the headtorch and its glow to register as well.
Without that, you'd probably get a flash-lit tapir floating in uniform black, with none of the sense of a team working by torchlight. Here, though, the darkness does not obscure the drama, but helps bring it to life by framing it.
The visible action runs on a diagonal: headtorch top left, arm across the center, wound and treatment on the right. The red liquid adds a splash of color, pulling the eye back to the middle of the frame.
Nobody's face is visible, but that's a feature, not a bug. This picture isn't about the human, it's about the act of care and the nature of the threat.
Van Noppen will be honored as part of the official award ceremony of the European Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2026 competition, held at the International Nature Photography Festival on 23 October.
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