By: Ethan & Connie Cao
Are you a lover of picture taking and movies? Have you heard about an awesome museum? The Natural History Museum in London contains a yearly contest for the Best Wildlife Photographer of the year. In 2022, 38,575 people from around the world joined the contest.
My favourite? The winner of the 2022 contest, Karine Aigner! Her photo was a buzzing ball of many cactus bees together. The picture was taken in Southern Texas in May, when the bees had come out of their tunnels and had arrived to mate. They formed a ball of male cactus bees fighting for one female bee. Later, the female was seen leaving with one of the male bees.
Winning the Urban Wildlife Awards was Mr. Kokh! Mr. Kokh was exploring things on his boat when he saw some polar bear wandering around a abandoned town. Trying to avoid making noise, he sent a quiet drone to fly and take a picture of the polar bears. The polar bears even looked at him!
Fernando Constatino Martinez Belmar of Mexico took an image of a rat snake feeding on a bat. He was hiding and waiting in a cave full of bats and snakes for the perfect moment to take a cool photo of the bats leaving the cave and the snakes attacking. This photo won him the Amphibian and Reptile Behavior prize. In my opinion, the resulting image looks really creepy.
A US man, Nick Kanakis snapped a clean photo of a grey-breasted wood wren putting it’s ear onto the ground to listen for insects in the ground. Also, here is a fun fact, wood wrens spend most of their times on the ground, not the air. He tried not to move so that the bird can move closer to find its insect underground. The bird did move closer, this gave him the opportunity to catch a sweet photo of the bird. He won the golden prize for Bird Behaviour.
Winner of the 10 and Under prize for Young Photographer of the Year was Ekaterina Bee! She caught a picture of two male ibexes on their hind legs when she was near Italy’s border with France. She was out on a trip with her family. In coincidence, she caught a beautiful photo winning her a prize.