It’s that time of the year again when light nights start to close in, weather starts to take a turn for the worse and you need as many fun things on the radar to take the edge off the end of summer. One to add to your winter cheer list is the Wildlife Photographer Of The Year 2015 exhibition at the Natural History Museum in London, which will feature some of the most striking wildlife photography from the last twelve months.
The finalists for the competition have now been selected by the judging panel and they’ll be announcing the winners from each of the categories on the 13th October 2015, along with the overall winning shot at an awards ceremony at the Museum. They’ll all be brought together for the 2015 exhibition, which will open its doors to the public on the 16th October 2015, running through until the 10th April 2015 when it will start its annual UK tour.
Tickets are available already from the Natural History Museum website and cost £13.50 for adults, £6.75 for concessions and children, £36.90 a family ticket (up to 2 adults and 3 children) and free entry for Museum members, patrons and kids under 4. The exhibition will be open seven days a week from 10am to 5.50pm with the last admission at 5.15pm. You can also catch this year’s Wildlife Photographer Of The Year exhibition during one of the Museum’s late night openings on the last Friday of every month.
More than 100 stunning images will be on display in the exhibition taken from every corner of the world from familiar British locations to faraway rain forests and underwater vantage points. Hung in stunning back-lit panels in the Natural History Museum’s Waterhouse Gallery, it’s definitely the best way to see some of the year’s most impressive wildlife photography, especially if you book tickets in a quiet midweek slot to give you ample breathing room to take it all in.
If you do rock up to the Museum and find the exhibition stacked to the rafters with tourists, all’s not entirely lost as there’s an easy way to manoeuvre the craziness. The biggest difficulty is often getting close enough and having enough time and space to read all of the captions as you go around, but with the new captions too, which you can use at www.nhm.ac.uk/wpy/captions, you can simply read the captions on your mobile phone as you got.
There’s a lot of variety in the bank of images that make it through every year, so expect to see everything from macro photography, animal portraiture, long exposure photography, the nights sky, underwater images and a whole lot more. You can also take a little peace of the brilliance away with you as a lot of the images will be available from the Natural History Museum shop with everything from mugs, posters and framed prints, which we’ve always been a sucker for (we can’t help ourselves to be honest. Stick a ptarmigan on the front cover of a calendar and we’re all over it).
The exhibition will include all of the finalists in both the adult and children’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition and if you’ve been to a previous exhibition you’ll know that the younger entrants can be just as awe inspiring as those in the older age group. In the adult competition, the categories are Earth’s Diversity, which includes mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish, invertebrates, plants and fungi; Earth’s Environments, including underwater, on land, in the skies and urban; Earth’s Design, which takes in detail, impressions, depicting nature from an artistic perspective, black & white and the TIMElapse Special Award; Documentary, which consists of both single image and story photojournalism; and the Portfolio prizes.
If you end up not being entirely happy with the winning selections, you’ll be able to contribute your own vote in the People’s Choice award. This will be launching on opening day for the exhibition, so you’ll be able to vote for the photographer that you were most impressed with too.
