Flamingos, cheetahs and gorillas are among the images on display in the London’s Natural History Museum’s new exhibition.
Flamingos, cheetahs and gorillas are among the images on display in their natural habitats in London’s Natural History Museum’s new exhibition.
The Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2011 exhibition is now open to the public, displaying over 100 images of animals from around the world.
UK photographers did well out of the 40,000 entries, making their mark by receiving the highly commended award in several categories.
The only British category winner was Steve Mills who won the ‘Behaviour: Birds’ category.
His photograph, ‘The assassin’, was taken close to North Yorkshire and shows a victorious merlin with its claw around the neck of a snipe dying in the snow.
Mr Mills, who bought his first camera 30 years ago, did not expect to win.
He said: “I was delighted to be the only British category winner.”
Mr Mills has a keen interest in wildlife and knew that due to the unusual snow in December 2010 birds would be out looking for food.
He spotted two snipes in an expanse of white, where nothing else was moving.
The birds, which are usually secretive in their feeding, were unaware of the impending danger.
“I saw out of the corner of my eye a falcon flying down low but neither bird saw it. It picked one and snatched it,” Mr Mills said.
“I knew I’d got something very special but there’s a lot of luck involved.”
The winner of the 2011 Veolia Environment Wildlife Photographer of the Year was announced last week as the Spanish Daniel Beltrá.
His photograph, ‘Still life in oil’, won him the prestigious award and showed pelicans dripping in oil, rescued from Gulf of Mexico oil Spill.
Jo Cooper, the curator of the Natural History Museum’s Bird Group, said: “Few images say more about human impacts on the marine environment than oiled birds.”
The pelicans form part of a series of six images, ‘The price of oil’, which shows through pictures the damaging results of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2011.
Judges chose these images as those telling the most memorable story and decided on Mr Beltra as the winner of 2011 Wildlife Photojournalist of the Year.
The photographs were judged by a panel of 10 experts including chair of seven years, Mark Carwardine, a zoologist, writer and photographer.
The competition is run by BBC Wildlife Magazine and the Natural History Museum.
