Awarded for Wildlife photography First awarded 1964 | Country United Kingdom Currently held by Tim Laman | |
Presented by The Natural History Museum Official website | ||
Wildlife Photographer of the Year is a wildlife photography competition in the world. It is an annual international wildlife photography competition owned by the Natural History Museum. It was known as BG Wildlife Photographer of the Year from 1990 to 2003, and briefly as Shell Wildlife Photographer of the Year, Kodak Wildlife Photographer of the Year and Prudential Wildlife Photographer of the Year. The first competition was held in 1964, with three categories and around 600 entries. In 2008 the competition received over 32,000 entries from 3100 photographers in 82 countries. There is an exhibition of the winning and commended images each year at the Natural History Museum, which later tours around the world. It is often cited as being one of the most prestigious photography competitions in the world.
Contents
- Competition
- Categories
- Most images
- First prize winners
- All prize winners
- The most active
- The longest
- Country list
- The full list
- 2009 Controversy
- References
A book of winning entries and runners-up has been published each year since 1992, with two books being published in 1994 (the first three volumes were published the year after the corresponding competitions were held). Early volumes have become quite collectable. These portfolios are the sources of the ranking.
Competition
A maximum of 25 images ranging from intimate animal portraits to atmospheric landscapes, ground-breaking photojournalism to innovative technique can be submitted once a year, in 12-17 permanent and alternate categories. Since 2003 the grand prize has been selected from among the winning images of the categories and has been awarded to a single image in adult and young competition too. The photographer aged 17 and under submitting the best image receives the title “The Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year”, while the author of the best image over 17 years of age becomes “The Wildlife Photographer of the Year”. (This award has never been won in adult category more than once.) The deadline of submission of the images is around late February, and the results become public in mid-October.
The winning images are selected from among approximately 50,000 entries received from almost 100 countries around the globe, in three rounds by a prestigious and professional jury. The awards ceremony takes place in the Natural History Museum in London. On this date the latest Wildlife Photographer of the Year portfolio, introducing the winning images, comes out. Following the awards ceremony, the extremely high-quality and major Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition opens its gates in London and after that touring worldwide throughout the year, attracting more than 5 million visitors.
Categories
Photographers can enter their images into a range of categories, whose criteria are mostly based on the subject matter of the images. There are also 3 categories for under 18's, and 3 special awards. The number and name of categories changes nearly every year. In each category a winning, runner-up and several highly commended images are usually chosen, although sometimes the judges will not choose a winner or runner up in a particular category if they deem the standard of entries not to be high enough. The categories in the 2016 competition were as follows:
Most images
All images published in the Wildlife Photographer of The Year portfolio book ever (minimum 11 images)
First prize winners
First prize winners in any category and overall winnings (minimum 3 first prizes)
All prize winners
Overall winner, winner, runner-up, specially commended, highly commended, and other prizes (minimum 10 prizes)
The most active
Total number of years when an author received awards (minimum 7 years)
The longest
The period between the first and last award (minimum 15 years)
Country list
91 countries, 1417 photographers, 3044 published images in Wildlife Photographer of The Year Portfolio books since 1991.
The full list
Full available database from 1984 on
2009 Controversy
The overall 2009 competition winner, José Luis Rodriguez, was stripped of his award and his £10,000 prize following allegations that his picture of a wolf leaping a gate had been staged, using a captive animal to do so. He was also prohibited from entering the competition for life. It was, however, too late to remove the image from the accompanying book.