‘We want viewers to share our enjoyment of nature and take the time to recognise its value,’ say organisers of the Comedy Wildlife Photography awards
Celebrating nature’s capacity to make us laugh, the latest winners of the Comedy Wildlife Photography awards have just been revealed.
The offbeat competition was founded in 2015 by photographers Paul Joynson-Hicks and Tom Sullam, who wanted to showcase funny images of wildlife while raising awareness about conservation.
“Our world is extraordinarily beautiful and interconnected, yet the human race is doing its best to over-exploit and damage it,” said Joynson-Hicks. “Issues of wildlife conservation and sustainability are gaining momentum globally, yet the messages and images tend to be negative, depressing and enervating.”
While a deluge of images of animals and habitats in peril can be hard to digest, the Comedy Wildlife Photography awards’ content accesses our empathy by showing how alike we really are, he said. “You don’t need to cover your eyes or look away. We want our viewers to share our enjoyment of nature and take the time to recognise its value.”
More than 9,000 images were entered, the highest number in the awards’ 10-year history. They came from professional and amateur photographers.
Around 45 of the very best entries were then selected for judges to choose their favourites. They described it as “fiercely competitive, with only a few points between the top five entries”.
Whenever I show this image at my local photography club, the audience always explode with raucous laughter, so I had to enter it!
Marchetti’s image was popular across the board with the judges, they said, with his capture of a red squirrel entering his hide in a tree and his legs at right angles to the trunk. The scene was over in a flash, as Marchetti recalls: “I have taken many, many photographs of squirrels, in many situations over the years in Italy, but this one struck me as really funny and such a strange position, because it is that exact moment when the squirrel is detaching its back legs from the trunk to enter its hide.
“Whenever I show this image at the nature seminars at my local photography club, the audience always explode with raucous laughter, so I had to enter it!”
Read on for nine more of our favourites from the awards.
Visit www.comedywildlifephoto.com to find out more
Main image: © Milko Marchetti / Nikon Comedy Wildlife
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