Winners of the 2020 Wildlife Photographer of the year announced

Sergey Gorshkov’s is this year’s Grand Title Winner of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, with his image of a Siberian tigress scent-marking a gnarled fir tree in the Russian far East.

The top prize for “Young Photographer of the Year”, was awarded to Liina Heikkinen for her dramatic picture of a young red fox, fiercely defending the remains of a goose from its five rival siblings in Finland.

These poignant images will feature alongside other category winners in an exhibition at the London Natural History Museum from Friday 16 September 2020. You can explore the exhibition online at the following link: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/wpy/gallery

The Natural History Museum awarded these images for “their artistic composition, technical innovation and truthful interpretation of the natural world”.

The “Wildlife Photographer of the Year” is an annual international wildlife photography competition and exhibition, organised by the London Natural History Museum, “highlighting the unique and beautiful relationship between photography, science and art.” The first competition was held in 1965, with three categories and around 600 entries.

Inspiring a love of the natural world and creating advocates for the planet

The Wildlife Photographer of the Year, which is often cited as one of the most prestigious competitions in the world, contributes to the Museum’s mission “to inspire a love of the natural world and create advocates for the planet.”

According to the Natural History Museum the “Wildlife Photographer of the Year has helped to foster a better understanding of the complexity and importance of the natural world. Awe-inspiring images of wild animals and their environments and poignant photojournalism, have helped the public fall in love with the natural world and care for its future”.

The ultimate aim of the competition is to “enhance the prestige of wildlife photography in the hope that the awards will benefit the animals themselves, by creating greater public interest in them and in that all-important topic: conservation.”

As a reminder, the Natural History Museum of London, UK, is “home to life and earth science specimens comprising some 80 million items within 5 collections: botany, entomology, mineralogy, palaeontology and zoology. The museum is a centre of research specialising in taxonomy, identification and conservation. Given the age of the institution, many of the collections have great historical as well as scientific value, such as specimens collected by Charles Darwin.”[i]

[i] Wikipedia, Natural History Museum, London, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_History_Museum,_London#External_links