Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2005. Winners of Competition by British National History Museum and BBC Wildlife Magazine
Location: 2nd floor, Great Hall
The competition showcases the very best nature photograps of 2005 to a worldwide audience, displaying the splendour, drama and variety of life on Earth. It also aims to show the artistry involved in wildlife photography and encourage a new generation of photographers to produce visionary and evocative interpretations of nature.
The winning image Sky Chase by Manuel Prest of a swirling flock of starlings evading a peregrine falcon was among nearly 17,000 entries from over 55 countries. The Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition is the world’s largest and most prestigious wildlife photographic competition, jointly organised each year by the Natural History Museum and BBC Wildlife Magazine.
“Sky Chase is a powerful image and, like it or not, it’s one that you will never forget.” said judge Mark Carwardine. “I particularly like its graphic simplicity and the starkness of black against white. But it works on another level too, because it is full of energy and movement and captures an absolutely perfect wildlife moment.”
Thousands of starlings roost in city parks in Rome, where it is warmer than the surrounding countryside and usually safer – except for the resident peregrines. When capturing the phenomenon, Manuel chose to work with two cameras: a hand-held zoom to rapidly follow the flocks as they whirled across the skies, merging into bigger and bigger clouds; and another on a tripod with a long lens, to capture details of the event. “This allowed me to take pictures of the amazing flock shapes as well as the dynamics of the peregrine attacks,” he says. It’s a stark, dramatic picture of a great natural spectacle that is becoming increasingly rare as European starling populations decline.
Inquisitive Jay by 10-year-old Jesse Ritonen shows a jay perched on a snowy pine branch. Last January for his tenth birthday Jesse received what he had been wanting since he was eight – an SLR digital camera. In February, his father took him for a couple of days to a hide in Utti, Finland, to photograph birds. Jesse has been interested in wildlife since he could walk, and so this was a special trip for him. The weather was overcast, but several jays, crows and two goshawks visited them. This jay came in the early morning and perched on the snowy branch of a pine tree opposite, staring directly into Jesse’s camera. “I was so excited,” says Jesse, “to have such long eye-contact with a wild bird.”
Sky chase and Inquisitive Jay will join the category winners and others in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition, which displays all 84 winning and commended images from the 2005 competition.
