Wildlife Photographer of the Year awards
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The Wildlife Photographer of the Year awards have released their annual shortlist of 25 nature images for public voting in the people’s choice category. Anyone can help whittle down the finalists to select one overall public vote award winner and four runners-up.
In its 59th iteration, the Wildlife Photographer of the Year recognizes some of the year’s best images of the natural world. London’s Natural History Museum, which develops and produces the completion and exhibition, received 49,957 entries from 95 countries this year.
The judging panel is only allowed to select 100 images and 25 are thrown to a public vote to round out the final list of winners. This year, there are images of a sleeping polar bear, an elephant savaging for food, Moon jellyfish under an aurora borealis, moments that remind us of human impact and more from around the globe.
Public voting is open through January 31, 2024, and the top five winners will be announced on February 7, 2024. Anyone wishing to cast a ballot can do so online or in person at London’s Natural History Museum. The people’s choice winners will join the 100 winners already selected by the award jury and join the public exhibition until it closes on June 30, 2024.
Tender touch
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Two courting mountain hares come together to touch noses in the Monadhliath Mountains in Scotland, UK.
For 15 years photographer Andy Parkinson has photographed hares in the region, but he says he’s never witnessed a moment like this. He was expecting the female to jump away from the male’s advances so he kept a wider frame to capture the action, but instead, the two came together.
Location: The Monadhliath Mountains, Scotland, UK
Technical details: Nikon D4s with 200-400mm | 1/1000 at F7.1 | ISO 400
Aurora jellies
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Moon jellyfish swarm in the cool autumnal waters of a fjord outside Tromsø in northern Norway. It’s common for this species to gather in groups of hundreds under the aurora borealis.
Photographer Audun Rikardsen used a long exposure where he also adjusted focus and aperture. This allows him to expose the reflection of the sky’s colors on the surface of the water as well as use a flash to light the jellyfish.
Moon jellyfish are common in all oceans and are easily recognized by their four rings, which are in fact their genitals.
Location: Tromsø, Northern Norway
Technical details: Canon EOS-1D X with Laowa 12mm | 34 sec at F2.8-22 (changed during exposure) | ISO 1600 | two Canon 600 flashes in underwater housing
A rare sight
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There are only a few hundred Ethiopian wolves left, making them the rarest species of wild dog in the world. Photographer Axel Gomille saw this one taking a rest among the highland vegetation of Ethiopia’s Bale Mountains National Park, which hosts their largest population.
The wolves are threatened by habitat loss and diseases, such as rabies and canine distemper, which they catch from domestic dogs.
Location: The Bale Mountains National Park, Ethiopia
Technical details: Nikon D4s with Sigma 150-600mm at 600mm | 1/1250 at F11 | beanbag
Tough negotiation
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Standing on a rock in the Judean Foothills of Israel, a red fox cub locks eyes with the shrew it had thrown up in the air moments earlier.
Photographer Ayala Fishaimer watched a red fox den and it wasn’t long before four cubs appeared and started to play. This cub lost interest in its siblings and started sniffing around, finding a shrew in the sand. It started knocking the shrew around like a ball and threw it into the air. As it landed, Fishaimer caught this frame.
Location: Judean Foothills, Israel
Technical details: Nikon D850 with AF-S Nikkor 200-500mm | 1/500 at F5.6 | ISO 140
Bull in a garbage dump
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A bull elephant kicks over garbage as it scavenges for rotten vegetables and fruit at a dump in Tissamaharama, Sri Lanka.
The male elephants in the region have recognized that there is food in the garbage, which has led to stand-offs with people using gunfire to frighten the elephants away from crops and people. This elephant has a scar from a gunshot wound on the upper left front leg and another wound high on its back.
Location: Tissamaharama, Sri Lanka
Technical details: Canon EOS R5 with 24-70mm | 1/500 at F8 | ISO 400
Fashion victims
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These coats made from the skins of a snow leopard, jaguar, ocelot and other big cats were confiscated by European customs officers and held for forensic tests before being used for educational events.
Hamburg’s Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change conducted forensic tests before using them to educate the public on the harm animal coats have on endangered species, as well as ensure they never return to the black market.
During the photoshoot, photographer Britta Jaschinski learned that on average the fur industry uses 12 animals to make one coat. Together with a biologist, she tried to identify how many cats were killed to produce the fashion items in this image, “but they stopped counting as they felt it was just too shocking.”
Location: Hamburg’s Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change, Germany
Technical details: Leica SL2 with Vario-Elmarit-SL 24-90mm at 50mm | 1/10 at F4.5 | ISO 400 | tripod | pattern metering | honeycomb continuous light
Duckling huddle
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A wood duck and its brood are caught in a late spring snowstorm in Smiggin Holes, New South Wales, Australia.
It would normally be warm and sunny when these ducklings hatch from their nest high up in a tree hollow, but warmer waters in the western Pacific Ocean due to La Nina have produced a wetter and colder spring and summer.
Photographer Charles Davis was there to see the ducks try to make their way through the winter conditions as their mother frantically tried to lead them to open water.
Location: Smiggin Holes, New South Wales, Australia
Technical details: Nikon Z9 with 400mm | 1/1250 at F10 | ISO 500
Rubbish drinks
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The Celebes crested macaques at Indonesia’s Tangkoko Batuangus Nature Reserve have learned that clear plastic bottles have water and colored bottles have surgery drinks.
Here, park rangers had collected piles of plastic bottles for recycling, as part of clean-up efforts. The monkeys are often seen chewing the caps off bottles or taking them into the forest for later.
Location: Tangkoko Batuangus Nature Reserve, Indonesia
Technical details: Canon EOS R5 with 100-500mm | 1/1000 at F5 | ISO 1600
Starling murmuration
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A mass of starlings swirl into the shape of a giant bird on their way to communal roosts above Rome, Italy.
Photographer Daniel Dencescu said he was mesmerized by the colossal shapes they formed in the sky, known as murmurations. Each day, as they returned from foraging the birds gathered in large numbers in the evenings. Dencescu says he spent hours following the starlings around the city until on one cloudless winter’s day, the flock swirled into the shape seen in the image.
Location: Rome, Italy
Technical details: Nikon D850 with 150-600mm | 1/1250 at F5.6 (+0.3 e/v) | ISO 2500
Snowshoes
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A snowshoe hare pulls its feet to its head to make the next big hop across the soft, deep snow in the forests of the Rocky Mountain National Park, USA.
It was a late spring morning and photographer Deena Sveinsson was snowshoeing deep in the forest when she noticed this hare sleeping on a small snow mound. She positioned herself in front of it and hours later the hare woke and hopped toward Sveinsson. Using a high frame rate, she captured the exact moment in its hop where the hare pulled its large back feet up next to its head.
Its large feet prevent the hare from sinking into the deep, soft snow, acting like snowshoes, hence its name.
Location: Rocky Mountain National Park, USA
Technical details: Sony a1 with 70-200mm at 200mm | 1/2500 at F8 | ISO 3200
Homecoming
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A pygmy round-eared bat returns to its termite-nest home as two well-camouflaged family members look out from the entrance in the lowland forests of Costa Rica. The bats exhibit a unique roosting behavior, resting in hollows that they carve out with their teeth inside the nests of termite colonies.
Using a nearby branch to support his camera, photographer Dvir Barkay set up an infrared trigger near the entrance along with three diffused flashes. It took over two months to get images of the rarely photographed bat.
Location: The lowland forests of Costa Rica
Technical details: Canon EOS R5 with Tokina 10-17mm | 2.7 sec at F16 | ISO 2000 | Godox wireless flashes | Sabre infrared trigger
Incoming Cuckoo wasp
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A rare cuckoo wasp flies toward the entrance of a mason bee’s clay burrow as a smaller cuckoo wasp cleans its wings below, near Montpellier, France.
Photographer Frank Deschandol witnessed the larger wasp try to enter the sealed burrow containing a mason bee’s eggs. unable to get in, the wasp flew away to retrieve water, which it would use to soften the clay so it could dig into the bee’s sealed-up burrow. Once inside it lays its own egg and reseals it. When the cuckoo wasp’s egg hatch, they feeds on mason bee larvae inside the burrow.
Location: Near Montpellier, France
Technical details: Canon EOS RP with 100mm macro | 1/1250 at F6.3 | ISO 1250 | reflector
Curiosity
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A lion cub walks toward photographer Gerald Hinde, who was watching from a vehicle in South Africa’s Greater Kruger National Park.
Lion cubs are vulnerable to predators such as leopards and hyenas, but often the main threat is from invading male lions. For the first six weeks cubs are kept hidden away, after which they’re introduced to the pride.
Location: Greater National Park, South Africa
Technical details: Canon EOS 5D Mark lll with 200-400mm and 1.4x extender | 1/640 at F5.6 | ISO 320
Swallow over meadow
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A barn swallow flies over a meadow of cornflowers, catching insects during springtime in eastern Germany. As their name suggests, barn swallows prefer to nest inside buildings and usually return to the same spot each year.
Photographers Hermann Hirsch and Jan Lessman knew where the birds were likely to go and positioned their camera with a remote trigger to make this frame.
Location: Eastern Germany
Technical details: Canon EOS R5 with 24-105mm | 1/3200 at F22 | ISO 6400 | wireless remote control
Looking at me, looking at you
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A grizzly bear rises up on its hind legs and glances toward the photographer before returning to fish for salmon in the Chilko River in British Columbia, Canada.
Photographer John E. Marriott was leading a tour on the Chilko River when his group came across the bear. Their small boat slowly floated by the bear while Marriott photographed.
Location: Chilko River, British Columbia, Canada
Technical details: Canon EOS R5 with 500mm | 1/1000 at F4.5 | ISO 5000
Missed sip of milk
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A humpback whale calf misses some of its mother’s milk, which drifts and swirls in the currents off the coast of Rurutu, French Polynesia. The whales don’t have lips, so the calves can be clumsy and on very rare occasions miss some of the milk.
In the seven years and hundreds of hours photographer Karim Iliya has been documenting humpback whales, he says he has only seen whale milk floating in the water twice. Both times were on a diving trip off the coast of Rurutu, with the same whale and her calf.
Location: Off the coast of Rurutu, French Polynesia
Technical details: Canon EOS R3 with 15-35mm at 15mm | 1/400 at F5.6 | ISO 500 | Nauticam housing
The grassland geladas
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A gelada suckles its baby alongside a female companion at the edge of a plateau in photographer Marco Gaiotti’s photograph made in the Simien Mountains of Ethiopia.
The gelada family unit, known as a harem, usually consists of one male and a small number of related females and their young. Gelada monkeys live only in the high mountain meadows of Ethiopia, where they spend most of their time on the ground grazing. “However, with the number of domestic livestock increasing, their grazing grasslands are now diminishing, pushing them into restricted areas.”
Location: The Simien Mountains of Ethiopia, Ethiopia
Technical details: Canon EOS R5 with 16-35mm at 16mm | 1/100 at F7.1 | ISO 400
Shared parenting
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“A pair of lionesses groom one of the pride’s five cubs in Kenya’s Maasai Mara.”
Early in the morning, photographer Mark Boyd watched the adult lions return from an unsuccessful night hunt. While away, they’d hidden the cubs in dense bushes and were now calling for the cubs to come out into the open grassland. Females raise each other’s cubs as their own, sharing parenting duties.
Location: Maasai Mara, Kenya
Technical details: Canon EOS 5D Mark III with 100-400mm | 1/320 at F5.6 | ISO 12800
Opportunity fox
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A young red fox searches a trash receptacle on a street in London, UK.
Over a two-month period, photographer Matt Maran watched the fox learn the best time to climb into this street bin, it figured out that Monday evenings shortly before the weekly collection was when discarded food was close to the top and easy to get at.
“An urban fox’s diet is made up of more than 50% natural food, such as earthworms, wild birds, seeds and fruits. As a result, these animals play an important role in the urban ecosystem.”
Location: London, UK
Technical details: Panasonic Lumix DC-S1 with 50mm | 1/80 at F2.5 | ISO 5000
Ice bed
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Photographer Nima Sarikhani was on an expedition vessel when they encountered a younger and an older male polar bear on some sea ice off Norway’s Svalbard archipelago. Sarikhani watched the bears for nearly eight hours until just before midnight, the young male climbed onto a small iceberg and clawed away at it to carve out a bed for himself.
Location: Off Norway’s Svalbard archipelago, Norway
Technical details: Canon EOS-1D X Mark III with 70-200mm at 200mm | 1/500 at F5 | ISO 400
Neighbourhood dispute
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A mudskipper defends its territory from a trespassing crab in Roebuck Bay, Australia. Photographer Ofer Levy watched the two continually confront each other out on the mud flat with the mudskipper always initiating the clash. The fish’s display of an open mouth and raised dorsal fin are meant to be a threatening display.
“Mudskippers can live both in and out of the water as long as they remain wet. They thrive along the intertidal mudflats and mangroves of Western Australia. These amphibious fish are fiercely territorial, often building mud walls around their territories where they feed and breed.”
Location: Roebuck Bay, Australia
Technical details: Canon EOS R5 with 800mm | 1/5000 at F11 | ISO 6400
Hope
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A rescued chimpanzee looks on from its enclosure at the Chimpanzee Conservation Center in the Republic of Guinea. Located in the National Park of Upper Niger, the center rehabilitates orphaned chimpanzees that have been rescued from being sold as pets after their mothers were killed for bushmeat. The goal is to release them back into the national park.
“Once abundant in Guinea, the western chimpanzee population is declining, and the species is now classified as critically endangered.”
Location: Chimpanzee Conservation Center in the Republic of Guinea
Technical details: Canon EOS R5 with 16-35mm | 1/2000 at F5 | ISO 1250
Troublemaker
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An Adélie penguin approaches an emperor penguin and its chick during feeding time in Antarctica’s Atka Bay. Photographer Stefan Christmann watched the exchange to see how the interactions between these three penguins would play out.
“Adélie penguins only appear in Antarctica’s Atka Bay for a short period during the southern hemisphere summer. They’re opportunists and can be a nuisance for emperor penguins and their chicks. If the chance arises, Adélie penguins will try to cause the adult or the chick to drop its food while the chick is being fed, snatching any that falls to the ground.”
Location: Atka Bay, Antarctica
Technical details: Nikon D500 with AF-S Nikkor 400mm | 1/800 at F5.6 | ISO 200
The happy turtle
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Photographer Tzahi Finkelstein was positioned in a hide in Israel’s Jezreel Valley photographing shore birds when he spotted a Balkan pond turtle walking in the shallow swampy water. He says he was more interested in watching the birds, but then a northern banded groundling dragonfly flew past his lens in the direction of the turtle.
The dragonfly unexpectedly landed on the turtle’s nose, but instead of snapping up the insect, the turtle held its mouth open and watched it.
Location: Jezreel Valley, Israel
Technical details: Nikon D500 with 500mm | 1/3200 at F5.6 (-0.3 e/v) | ISO 320
Autumn glow
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To photographer Uge Fuertes Sanz, this river scene with bulrushes and quaking aspens seemed as if it had been painted.
“The light and the composition of the plants between the trunks, together with the shapes and colors of the autumn leaves, created texture and balance.”
He took more than a hundred images from the banks of the Cabriel River in the Sierra deAlbarracín Mountains in Spain and made this frame under the soft light of a passing cloud.
Location: Cabriel River in the Sierra de Albarracín Mountains, Spain
Technical details: Canon EOS 5D Mark III with Tamron 150-600mm at 428mm |1/640 at F9 | ISO 1250
Voting now open
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Public voting closes on January 31, 2024.
Entries for the next competition are also open until December 7, 2023. To commemorate the competition’s 60th anniversary, there are fee waivers for over 100 countries. Photographers of all ages and skill levels are encouraged to submit their work.
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This article comes from DP Review and can be read on the original site.
