Nature at its best

Inspired by the natural world around them, photographers often capture amazing images of natural beauty and what better way to showcase them than in the Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition

Flicking through the winning and highly commended images from the Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, you can imagine the difficulty the judges had in picking out winners. Each year the competition – owned by the Natural History Museum and BBC Wildlife Magazine – receives thousand of entries from both professional and amateur photographers who think they’ve captured the quintessential wildlife image.

This year’s overall winner was Bence Máté from Puszaszer for his image A marvel of ants – a simple shot that captures the complex behaviour of leaf-cutter ants in the Coast Rican rainforest. “They proved to be wonderful subjects,” says Máté, “The variation in the size of the pieces they cut was fascinating - sometimes small ants seemed to carry huge bits, bigger ones just small pieces.”

“I love the contrast between the simplicity of the shot itself and the complexity of the behaviour,” he said. Chair of the judging panel, Mark Carwardine said: “The photographer is clearly a master of his craft with an artist’s eye.”

Máté’s image – along with 100 other prize winning photographs from the competitions 18 categories – will be on display at the Natural History Museum until 11th March 2011, and will then tour the country.

Next year’s competition opens on 12th January 2011 and you can enter your photos online at www.nhm.ac.uk/wildphoto until 18th March 2011.

Back in front out – the comings and goings of the chinstraps – by Esa Mälkönen. Highly commended in the Black and White category