Highly commended images from the Natural History Museum’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year (WPY) competition have been released. There is a great variety of pictures, including perching primates, fast disappearing habitats and peeking possums. This year’s competition attracted almost 50,000 entries from professionals and amateurs across the world, and the overall winners, including the Grand Title winners, will be announced on October 13th.
For the first time, the awards ceremony will be conducted virtually from the Natural History Museum’s famous Hintze Hall. Winning images are selected for their creativity, originality, and technical excellence by an international panel of industry experts.
Among the Highly Commended images is 13-year-old Arshdeep Singh’s image of a douc, a critically-endangered primate (above), caught in its lush and verdant environment. Meanwhile, Charlie Hamilton James’s image of a lone tree surrounded by the vicious flames of a forest fire (below) stands as a testament to human impact upon the Amazon rainforest and the damage being done to the natural world.
“Several of my favourite images from the competition – the ones that I can look at again and again – are among the commended pictures,” said Roz Kidman Cox Chair of the judging panel. But then all the commended images are effectively winners, being among the top 100 awarded by the jury out of more than 49,000. The diversity of subjects and styles this year is memorable, with more than 25 different nationalities represented. But what especially stands out are the images from the young photographers.” See another example by Hannah Vijayan below, from the 15-17 Year-Old Category.
After the exhibition is unveiled at the Natural History Museum on Friday 16 October, the images will embark on a UK tour. Tickets go on sale to members and supporters on the 1st of September, to ticket holders for WPY55 who were unable to attend the exhibition due lockdown on the 2nd and on general sale on the 3rd. Book tickets here.
