Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2021

Arizona Docent

Arizona Docent

Well-Known Member
15+ year member
Here it is, the results of Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2021: Gallery | Wildlife Photographer of the Year | Natural History Museum (nhm.ac.uk)

Every year Natural History Museum (London) hosts the world's most prestigious nature photography competition, called Wildlife Photographer of the Year. A total of 100 images (from several categories) are chosen from nearly fifty thousand entries for the exhibition. A commemorative hardcover book called Wildlife Photographer of the Year Portfolio ## is also produced. (The ## is the number of the edition, this one being 31). The images are displayed as large format back-lit transparency prints in a gallery with black walls in the museum. I have seen it in person twice and the effect is mezmerizing.

By all means see it if you have the opportunity. If you love nature photography you will want to order the book. I have every volume from portfolio 14 to 30. You can order Portfolio 31 now from Natural History Museum but if you live in USA it is cheaper to order it from Amazon and wait a month until it ships in our country (because shipping fees from England via NHM are more than the book itself).
 
I can see the appeal, I quite liked it, though it does seem like something more based off of personal tastes.
 
birdsandbats said:
I can't believe that photo of a blurry Guanaco got in the top photos.
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Arizona Docent said:
Agree - I found that blur very distracting. I assume it was in the artistic/creative category and they thought it was a unique way to frame the mountains, but it was too far out of focus for my taste.
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It was in the category "Animals in their Environment". I feel like the competition is Wildlife Photographer of the Year, not Mountains Photographer of the Year!

I'm not a fan of that Grizzly photo either, which was the winner in that same category. It's a camera trap photo - all the photographer did was set the camera up and walk away. There is basically no skill involved in that other than knowing how to turn the camera on.
 
I haven't looked at this year's lineup in detail. But I do remember the overall winner from last year - the person named Wildlife Photographer of the Year - also won with a camera trap photo (Siberian tiger scratching tree). I think I discussed this on last year's thread. While I agree that camera traps give us images never before possible, I feel they should have their own category. I don't think people should be allowed to enter them in the main categories that include people catching the action as they see it. There is some skill involved in setting up the trap and lighting (@Chlidonias statement that no skill is involved is an overstatement). However I disagree with calling someone the Wildlife Photographer of the Year when they weren't even present when the photo was taken.
 
I totally missed this thread and going through the photos I’m amazed by most of the entries! There are a couple that stand out to me, especially the deceased crocodile due to the result of wildfires which further invokes the story behind climate change.

Besides the bear camera trap photo that I certainly don’t agree being on there, the one that seemed much more odd would be the Asian elephant in a Thailand zoo. While it is under the category of photojournalism mostly pertaining to wildlife in captivity, it’s still in a captive animal in a captive setting and in my opinion should disqualify as wildlife photography almost immediately. Yes it’s wildlife being photographed but within a zoological setting and by that rationale, most of what we do can be to extent wildlife photography when at zoos or other similar facilities.
 
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