2024 saw the 60th edition of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Award organised by the Natural History Museum in London. Entries come from amateur and professional photographers from around the world and three of the categories are reserved for children and teenagers. The winning photo above is just one of the amazing images captured by young people about the natural world.
Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas from Germany won the 15-17 Years category and was named Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year for the image above, "Life Under Dead Wood". He had to work quickly to capture this tiny springtail insect, which is just 2 millimeters long and can jump many times its body length in an instant. He rolled over a log and saw the springtail, which are abundant over the world, and the fruiting body of slime mould.
Alberto Román Gómez also had to work quickly to capture this fast-flying stonechat bird out of the window of his father's car in the Sierra de Grazalema Natural Park in Spain. The contrast of the delicat bird with the heavily chained gates suggested the title, "Free as a bird".
The Romantic poet Tennyson described nature as "red in tooth and claw". Parham Pourahmad's photo perfectly depicts that. He photographed a young Cooper’s hawk eating a squirrel in Ed R Levin County Park in California. Parham spent a summer regularly visiting this urban park in the city of Milpitas to record the variety of wildlife.
The Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition aims to fuel interest in the protection of wildlife. For this striking photo, Justin Gilligan created a mosaic from the 403 pieces of plastic found inside the digestive tract of the dead flesh-footed shearwater on the left. This is just one of the many dead birds collected and studied by Adrift Lab in New South Wales to study the impact of plastic pollution on marine ecosystems. Their study showed that this shearwater was typical of three quarters of adult flesh-footed shearwaters breeding on Lord Howe Island – and 100% of fledglings – whose bodies contained plastic detritus.
Finally, the overall Wildlife Photographer of the Year award went to Canadian Shane Gross for this image of western toad tadpoles in Cedar Lake, Vancouver Island in British Columbia. The beautifully lit tadpoles seem to bear witness to the abundance of nature. Yet only 1% will survive to adulthood.
The 100 awarded images from this year's competition are on view at the Natural History Museum until 29 June 2025.
Copyright(s) :
The individual photographers credited in the captions.
Tag(s) : "animals" "Australia" "California" "Canada" "competition" "environment" "Germany" "natural history" "Natural History Museum" "photography" "Spain"