AD6: Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Playing catchup: my artist date from last week was a quick jaunt to the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition, which I realised was leaving Bristol on Sunday.

I enjoy the exhibition. As with past years, though, I walked past the signs at Bristol’s City Museum quite a few times, thinking, “Oh, it’s on for ages. I can nip in any time,” and not actually nipping in.

So, I’m glad my artist date made me devote a bit of time and go along specially.

As usual, the exhibition was crowded (next time I really must nip along a 9AM on a wet weekday, rather than at lunchtime on a Friday during half-term…) but the quality was high.

The competition’s split into various different categories. I think my favourites were probably “Urban Wildlife” and “Behaviours”, though they were all good.

The photos I liked enough to write down were Relaxation, by Jasper Doest, of a sleeping macaque; Snow Pounce, by Richard Peters, whose composition I loved; Midnight Snack, by Alexander Badyaev, from the Urban category, of a mouse sneaking some peanut butter on toast in a cabin at night; and finally Frozen Moment by Paul Nicklen, of a penguin bursting out of the water.

Paul Nicklen’s was my favourite, I think, and I found out later that he’d won the overall competition, too, with Bubble-jetting Emperors, another of his penguin studies.

Anyway. I’ll stop here, because it’s already Tuesday, and I’ve not figured out what I’m going to do for this week’s artist date yet…