Photo: Pete Atkinson, UK. The Underwater World - Runner-up. Crown jellyfish Beautiful hard corals encircle the South Pacific island of Niue.
Grabbing her duck caller, Frances Huggett went to see The Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition organised by the Natural History Museum and BBC Wildlife Magazine
The Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2003 exhibition at the Natural History Museum until April 18 is a collection of this year’s best wildlife photographs.
It brings together over 100 fantastic images from around the world, all conveying the beauty and importance of the natural world.
It also captures those moments in the wild that human eyes rarely witness, like the instant a Dalmatian pelican wakes in the morning or the almost extinct bearded vulture.
Photo: Gary Schultz, USA, Gorilla and boy. Wildlife Photographer of the Year - Winner. Taken at the gorilla house at Miami Metrozoo in Florida.
Overall winner in the adult category was Gerhard Schultz’s poignant Gorilla and boy, where a boy looks at a captive gorilla’s sad expression through the glass window of its enclosure. It shows an amazingly deep, almost human, expression within the animals’ eyes.
"Gorilla and boy is a picture with layers of meaning - as the best always are," said Rosamund Kidman-Cox, one of the judges and editor of BBC Wildlife magazine.
"The gorilla is resigned and looking out of the picture and the boy is seemingly earnest in thought. It leaves you to draw the conclusions."
Photo: Nick Oliver, UK. Animal Behaviour: Birds - Winner Barn owl - a vole’s-eye view. "I watched this barn owl hunt over rough grassland in Suffolk for hours, until I knew her habits intimately. I then set up a camera trigger and lure near a post she sometimes perched on. I focused the camera at the height at which I hoped she would hover," said Nick.
Iwan Fletcher, aged 17, was overall winner of the three junior categories with Sanderling Resting, where a small wading bird momentarily falls asleep while searching for food. Amazingly, he managed to get within three feet of this usually timid creature to get the perfect close up.
But don’t just go to see the winners. There are a variety of images from each of the 12 adult categories on display, and all are superb. It must have been almost impossible for the judges to pick just one winner.
Nick Oliver’s Barn owl - a vole eye-view shows an owl hovering with its talons outstretched, and is exactly what an owl’s victim would see in its final moments.
Another section focuses more on aesthetic qualities. Among others, Budd Titlow’s Pickerelweed in Autumn Reflections stands out as a beautiful sea of russets, golds and reds, broken only by the occasional dark tuft of pickerelweed.
Photo: José B. Ruiz, Spain. Innovation Award - Winner - White storks roosting In Barruecos Natural Park, in Extremadura, Spain.
Reptiles are also represented, and one gruesome example is Tony Ord’s photograph of a rock python swallowing a kingfisher. Only a wing is still visible as the snake devours its pray whole.
One of my favourites was in the From Dusk to Dawn section, where the vivid orange hue of the setting sun near Uluru (Ayer’s rock) is a backdrop for a single crow resting on a branch.
Another section illustrates man’s effect on the natural world and includes a sad picture of a group of lions encircled by the tyre tracks of various over-curious tourists in jeeps.
Photo: Nick Garbutt, UK. Gerald Durrell Award - Specially Commended - Proboscis monkey leaping. Taken on the Mananggol River in Sabah, Borneo.
Other sections included animal portraits, the underwater world, animal behaviour, in praise of plants, urban and garden wildlife and animals in their environment.
There are also many other junior runners up on display, some as young as eight. The ten years-old and under category has a delightful picture of a brown bear sniffing the air, and the winning entry for 11-14 year-olds was of a young leopard resting its head between the fork of a tree.
If you want to see some spectacularly original wildlife photographs this is the place to come. A must for all adults and children interested in wildlife or photography.
