Wildlife Photographer of the Year

The sun was shining and a quartet was playing near the Royal Pavilion Cafe as I walked through the Pavilion Gardens on my way to Brighton Museum and Art Gallery.

It was almost exactly 200 years ago that the architect John Nash started transforming the old Pavilion building into the Indo-Islamic fantasy and royal residence that we know and love today. It will always be associated with George, Prince of Wales, who became Prince Regent in 1811 and loved to escape to the Brighton seaside where he could enjoy discreet liaisons with the twice-widowed Maria Fitzherbert. He even married her secretly in 1785 (secretly for several reasons, one of which was because she was a Roman Catholic) and, although the ‘affair’ had blown over by 1794, he never really got over her, keeping all her letters to him and even clasping a memento of her when he was on his deathbed in 1830. Maria died a few years later and was buried in the first Catholic church in Brighton, St John the Baptist, which she funded.

Today, crowds were sprawled on the lawns enjoying the sun, children were playing, two guys with afros and rasta beanies were busking, lost in their own rhythm.

Brighton Museum and Art Gallery is hosting the 2014 Wildlife Photographer of the Year touring exhibition with 100 of the best photographs on display. The 2014 competition was the 50^th annual event, which is run each year by the BBC and the Natural History Museum.

The photographs were displayed on panels in darkened rooms – that also held stuffed birds from the local Booth Museum and other displays to supplement the exhibition. Each item had an accompanying description that included the relevant photo-taking details (camera make and model; lens; aperture; shutter; ISO; flash used etc).

(I’m a bit of a camera anorak so I made a tally of the winning camera manufacturers. As expected, the big two manufacturers, Nikon and Canon, accounted for 97% of the photos exhibited, and each provided roughly half of the entries with the Canon 5D3 and the Nikon D800 well represented).

Here are some of the photos that I found particularly memorable:

THE LAST GREAT PICTURE – the overall winner - the sun’s setting rays warmed Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park and the rock outcrop on which a pride of 14 lions lounged, most asleep, some watchful. The photographer, Michael Nichols, tracked the lions for six months before managing to take this stunning photo – in black and white.

THE MOUSE, THE MOON AND THE MOSQUITO – this is the first photo that you see as you enter the gallery. It was taken at night, with flash, as a deer mouse, whiskers aquiver, perched on a giant puffball mushroom, looks at a hovering mosquito caught in the light of the full moon, which is rising in the background.

TOUCHÉ – a sword-billed hummingbird uses its giant beak to ‘see off’ an attacking collared inca bird. The hummingbird uses its long bill to suck nectar from deep flowers – it is the only bird with a bill longer than its body length (excluding the tail). The photo captures the split-second drama of the battle and was taken with a flash lasting one ten-thousandth of a second!  

HOLLYWOOD COUGAR – the photographer Steve Winter had the idea of photographing a wild cougar in front of the ‘Hollywood’ sign outside Los Angeles so he set up a camera with a tripwire – and waited 14 months until one night a cougar set it off and photographed itself against the famous illuminated sign. Cougars (also called mountain lions or pumas) are seven to eight feet long, weigh 100-150 pounds and are domestic to the Americas, ranging from Canada to Chile. Big pussies!

CARDINAL SPARKS – this photo was taken underwater and is an explosion of colour involving intricate twisting sinuous tentacles of anemones and flitting cardinalfish; a natural and colourful underwater ‘spaghetti junction’.  

The exhibition is on until 6^th September 2015 (non residents beware: the Museum & Art Gallery, which formerly had free entry, introduced an entry charge - £5 for adults – from three weeks ago).