I went to see the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition at the Natural History Museum on Saturday. This was my third year, and although the format’s always the same, I really enjoyed it again.
The winning one (an elephant spraying water everywhere) was good, but my personal favourite was the goat on the mountain:
Not a helpful post, really, since the exhibition has closed now, but you can still see the photos online.
The only complaint I would make about it is the merchandise, or lack of it. I understand you want to splash the winners all over everything, but I’m sure everyone has their own favourite and I couldn’t find so much as a goat postcard.
I went to see this exhibition at the weekend too!
This was one of my favourites:
I also really liked this one and this one.
I wasn’t very impressed with the limited selection of postcards either. I wanted to buy a few for my friend who couldn’t make it, but I managed to get her a catalogue instead.
Oh, I liked the zebras too! As we went round, we picked a favourite in each category, and the zebras almost won, but were eventually disqualified for looking a bit too much like a scene from Racing Stripes.
I also liked the ice one – in fact, that whole category was amazing. Ever wonder if we should leave Nature and travel the world one photo at a time…?
I went to the exhibit as well, a while ago, and also enjoyed it. See what I had to say about it here
You know, I’d never thought about that – but you are absolutely right, there were hardly any pictures of sex or sex ralted activities this year, were there? Last year I think I remember one of hummingbirds or birds of paradise or some such animal, with the males showing their colours to the females, but this year I can’t think of any offhand.
I’m not sure, but I wonder if it’s a consequence of this year there being more emphasis on single animal portrait style shots. Maybe I’m wrong, but there seemed to be fewer group shots, more individuals. Perhaps it’s easier to catch one animal being photogenic than waiting for three three to do it simultaneously?
I love this competition, and have managed to see previous years’ exhibits in London, Bristol and Glasgow. It’s a shame they don’t do a world tour, I’d pay good money to see it here!
It seems funny, given how easy digital printing is, that they don’t have an online shop for printing images big, small, on teddies or whatever – they could raise money for them and for the photographer.
@Cath, I wonder why they don’t? All the images are digital, so surely costs of staging secondary exhibitions would be neglible compared to the organisation costs. And I’m sure NHM must have partner organisations all around the world who would be happy to host a leg of the tour.
@Scott, at the exhibition they did have a terminal to request a poster (or something like that, can’t remember exactly) by print on demand, but nothing else. I see they do have an online shop, but it only sells the same merchandise as in the museum. So it’s not the e-commerce side that’s a problem.
I think when I’ve finished typing this, I’ll go and find out who runs the exhibition, invite them to give a Second Life talk, then we can ask!