This competition has become “a poignant testimony to the impact of Man on the planet”
Director of Éditions Biotope, which has been publishing for eight years the French version of the beautiful book (100 photos in total) which each year accompanies the results of the competition (1), Jean-Yves Kernel insists on this increasingly significant activist side: “ The objective of this competition is not only to amaze, but to raise awareness and confront us with reality. For years now, we have felt in photojournalism an increasingly pressing and committed commitment to environmental damage. Over sixty years, the competition has evolved: from a tribute to the wonders of nature, it has become a poignant testimony to the impact of Man on the planet. »
Emotion
The image that magnifies, the image that testifies and denounces. “It’s its strength,” continues Jean-Yves Kernel. Through the emotion that a photo can provide, we send a message. And an image can be both aesthetic and informative. »
Beauty (these millions of tadpoles going up a Canadian river, this Amur lynx stretching in the sun…), gentleness (a baby macaque sleeping on its mother between two feedings), violence (the fight between an anaconda and a caiman in a Brazilian swamp) and many other photos as surprising as they are moving… The 2024 class of the Wildlife competition once again keeps all its promises. To discover in the book from Éditions Biotope.
« Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2024: The most beautiful nature photos »ed. Biotope, 160 p., €34.
Category: animals and their environment. “Frontier of the Lynx”: in Russia, Igor Metelski surprises a lynx stretching on the snow, at sunset. It took the photographer six months of patience to obtain this shot.
Igor METELSKIY/Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2024
Alexis TINKER-TSAVALAS/Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2024
Grand Prize for photographers aged 15 to 17. Springtails and slime molds are two of the author’s favorite macro photography subjects. He found this subject in a forest near Berlin.
Britta JASCHINSKI/Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2024
Category: photojournalism. A newly developed powder can be colored for use on materials such as rhino horn or elephant ivory to reveal prints, which until recently was impossible. This technique makes it possible to fight against traffickers. Here, a technician works in the specialist unit at Heathrow Airport, London.
Category: mammal behavior. Wilpattu National Park, Sri Lanka. This baby toque macaque was happily nursing its mother’s milk. It was so relaxed that he almost fell asleep.
Jack Zhi / Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2024
Bird category. A peregrine falcon hunts the butterfly in California, United States. Jack Zhi went to the same place multiple times for eight years to capture these extremely fast-flying birds, at more than 300 km/h.
Georgina Steytler/Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2024
Category: Behavior: Invertebrates. Carnarvon, Australia. When Dawson’s Amegilla bees emerge in the spring, the females are surrounded by males who compete to mate with them. After mating, the female digs a burrow where she will lay her eggs on the pollen reserves that she has previously amassed. The larvae will develop and pupate there, before emerging in turn the following spring.
Karine Aigner, Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2024
Behavior category: amphibians and reptiles. Pantanal National Park, Brazil. A yellow anaconda wraps itself around the mouth of a yacare caiman, despite seemingly calm appearances, the fight was fierce.
