Photo story: Wildlife Photographer of the Year
Enjoy a selection of this year’s winning images from the Natural History Museum competition that showcases some of the best nature photography on the planet.
This year’s awe-inspiring winning images from the competition that highlights the beauty of nature
LIFE IN THE BALANCE
JAIME CULEBRAS, SPAIN
Winner 2020, Behaviour: Amphibians and Reptiles
A Manduriacu glass frog snacks on a spider in the foothills of the Ecuadorian Andes. Jaime’s determination to share his passion for these little amphibians had driven him to walk for four hours, in heavy rain, through the forest, to reach the frogs’ streams in Manduriacu Reserve.
As the downpour grew heavier, forcing him to turn back, he spotted one small frog clinging to a branch, its eyes like shimmering mosaics. Not only was it eating (he had photographed glass frogs eating only once before), it was also a newly discovered species, distinguished by the yellow spots on its back and lack of webbing between its fingers. Serenaded by a frog chorus, Jaime captured the first ever picture of the species feeding.
THE EMBRACE
SERGEY GORSHKOV, RUSSIA
Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2020 overall winner.
Winner 2020, Animals in their Environment
An Amur tigress hugs an ancient fir in Russia’s Land of the Leopard National Park, leaving scent secretions on the bark. This big cat – now regarded as the same subspecies as the Bengal tiger – is found only in this region, with a few individuals in China and possibly North Korea. Hunted almost to extinction in the past century, the population is still threatened by poaching and logging, but recent (unpublished) camera-trap surveys indicate that numbers may be growing.
Determined to take a picture of the symbol of his Siberian homeland, Sergey scoured the forest for signs, focusing on trees along regular routes. He installed a camera-trap opposite the fir in January 2019; in November, he achieved the image he was hoping for.
ELEONORA’S GIFT
ALBERTO FANTONI, ITALY
Winner 2020, Rising Star Portfolio
On the steep cliffs of a Sardinian island, a male Eleonora’s falcon brings his mate a meal. These raptors breed on cliffs and small islands along the Mediterranean coast in late summer, specifically to coincide with the mass autumn migration of small birds to Africa.
Alberto was watching from a hide on San Pietro Island, from where he could photograph the adults on their clifftop perch. He couldn’t see the nest, hidden in a crevice in the rocks, but he could watch the male pass on his prey.
ETNA’S RIVER OF FIRE
LUCIANO GAUDENZIO, ITALY
Winner 2020, Earth’s Environments
From a great gash on the southern flank of Mount Etna, lava flows within a huge tunnel, re-emerging further down the slope as an incandescent red river. Luciano and his colleagues had trekked for several hours up the north side of the volcano, through stinking steam and over ash-covered rocky masses.
What Luciano most wanted to capture was the drama of the lava river flowing into the horizon. The only way to do that was to wait until just after sunset – ‘the blue hour’ – when contrasting shadows would cover the side of the volcano and, with a long exposure, he could set the incandescent flow against the blue gaseous mist to capture ‘the perfect moment’.
THE LAST BITE
RIPAN BISWAS, INDIA
Winner 2020, Wildlife Photographer Portfolio Award
On a dry riverbed in India’s Buxa Tiger Reserve, a weaver ant bites defensively into the slender hind leg of a giant riverine tiger beetle. In the seconds that followed, the beetle used its large, curved mandibles to snip the ant in two – but the ant’s head and upper body remained firmly attached. “The beetle kept pulling at the ant’s leg, trying to loosen its grip,” says Ripan, “but couldn’t reach its head.” Ripan used flash to illuminate the lower part of the beetle, balancing this against the harsh sunlight to achieve a dramatic, eye-level shot.
WATCHING YOU WATCHING THEM
ALEX BADYAEV, RUSSIA/USA
Winner 2020, Urban Wildlife
The Cordilleran flycatcher is usually very specific in its choice of nest-site in Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front – selecting crevices on canyon shelves. But this pair chose to make their home in the window frame of a research cabin instead. So as not to disturb his guests, Alex hid his camera in the bark of a nearby tree and operated the set-up from inside. He captured this shot as the female checked on her four nestlings.
OUT OF THE BLUE
GABRIEL EISENBAND, COLOMBIA
Winner 2020, Plants and Fungi
It was a sunset shot of Ritak’Uwa Blanco – the highest peak in the Eastern Cordillera of the Colombian Andes – that Gabriel had set out to photograph. But the foreground of white arnica captured his attention instead.
The plant flourishes in the high-altitude paramo of the Andes, adapted to the extreme cold with a dense covering of woolly hairs and ‘antifreeze’ proteins in its leaves. As dusk faded, the scene became drenched in an ethereal light. But while the silvergrey leaves were washed in blue, the flowers shone bright yellow, leading the eye towards the mountain but stealing its limelight.
PERFECT BALANCE
ANDRÉS LUIS DOMINGUEZ BLANCO, SPAIN
Winner 2020,10 Years and Under
Andrés had spotted European stonechats hunting insects in a meadow near his home in Andalucia. Photographing the birds through the open window of his father’s car, he saw a male alight on a flower stem, which began to bend under its delicate weight. The bird kept perfect balance and Andrés framed his composition.
THE POSE
MOGENS TROLLE, DENMARK
Winner 2020, Animal Portraits
Pale blue eyelids now complement the auburn hair of a young proboscis monkey in Labuk Bay, Borneo. In some primates, contrasting eyelids play a role in social communication, but their function in proboscis monkeys is not yet known. Mogens’s unforgettably peaceful portrait connects us, he hopes, with a fellow primate.
BACKROOM BUSINESS
PAUL HILTON, UK/AUSTRALIA
Winner 2020, Wildlife Photo journalist Story Award
A young pig-tailed macaque is put on show, chained to a wooden cage in Bali’s bird market. Pig-tailed macaques are energetic, social primates living in large troops in forests throughout South-East Asia. As their habitats are destroyed, the monkeys increasingly raid agricultural crops and are shot as pests. Orphaned babies are then sold into lives of solitary confinement as pets or zoo animals, or for biomedical research. Paul photographed this monkey in a dark backroom, using a slow exposure.
A TALE OF TWO WASPS
FRANK DESCHANDOL, FRANCE
Winner 2020, Behaviour: Invertebrates
This remarkable simultaneous framing of a red-banded sand wasp (left) and a cuckoo wasp, about to enter next-door nest-holes, was achieved thanks to an elaborate camera set-up in a sandy bank on a brownfield site in Normandy. The female Hedychrum cuckoo wasp parasitises the nests of certain solitary digger wasps, laying her eggs in her hosts’ burrows. The larger wasp lays her eggs in her own burrow, which she provisions with caterpillars.
Frank’s aim was to photograph the cuckoo wasp, and – despite the extremely narrow depth of field and tiny subjects – he was gifted this perfectly balanced composition by the insects’ fortuitous flightpaths.
GREAT CRESTED SUNRISE
JOSE LUIS RUIZ JIMÉNEZ, SPAIN
Winner 2020, Behaviour: Birds
After several hours up to his chest in water in a lagoon near Brozas, Spain, Jose Luis captured this intimate shot of a great crested grebe family. His camera floated on a U-shaped platform beneath the small camouflaged tent that also hid his head. To avoid predators, chicks leave the nest within a few hours of hatching, living on a parent’s back for the next two to three weeks.
On this particular morning, not a breath of wind rippled the water as the parent on feeding duty emerged with a tasty meal. The stripy-headed chick stretched out of its sanctuary, open-beaked, to claim its breakfast.
WHEN MOTHER SAYS RUN
SHANYUAN LI, CHINA
Winner 2020, Behaviour: Mammals
This rare portrait of a family of Pallas’s cats on the remote steppes of the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau in northwest China is the result of six years’ work at high altitude. These small cats are normally elusive and solitary, and mostly active at dawn and dusk.
Through long-term observation, Shanyuan knew his best chance to photograph them in daylight would be in August and September, when the kittens were a few months old. Hours of patience were rewarded when the three youngsters came out to play, their mother keeping her eye on a Tibetan fox lurking nearby.
THE GOLDEN MOMENT
SONGDA CAI, CHINA
Winner 2020, UnderWater
Caught in Songda’s light beam, a diamondback squid paralarva in the Philippines stops hunting for an instant and gilds itself in shimmering gold. A paralarva is the stage between hatchling and subadult, when the animal is already recognisable as a squid. Chromatophores (organs below the skin) contain elastic sacs of pigment that stretch rapidly into discs of colour when the muscles around them contract. Deeper in the skin, iridophores reflect and scatter light, adding an iridescent sheen. From above, Songda captured the fleeting moment when, hovering in perfect symmetry, the youngster showed its true colours.
WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR is run and developed by the Natural History Museum, London, where the winning and highly commended entries can be viewed until 6 June 2021. For details of the exhibition, how to enter the next competition, and dates and venues of the regional exhibition tour, visit: wildlifephotographeroftheyear.com
Turn the page to find out what the judges are looking for…