The Wildlife Photographer of the Year Award comes to an end tomorrow.
Every year, almost without fail, I get myself - and any stray kids or adults I can round up - to see the exhibition at the Natural History Museum. And every year, I feel almost compelled to weep at the images they capture, showing me a sometimes alien, but stunningly beautiful world.
Insects whose black luminous bodies flicked with rainbows jostle with glossily beautiful birds and big cats, vast underwater caverns in turquoise and midnight blue sit beside white and brown tundras of aching loneliness. However well you think you know the world, the exhibition will reflect it through other eyes, making even the domestic and familiar unfamiliar.
So my favourite photographs are not those taken in the remote Andes by photographers who laid for hours (or even days) on their stomachs in snow, or mud to capture nearly-extinct creatures. Or those who risked death in freezing waters, being nudged by great white sharks looking for their next meal.
No, my favourites are the ones taken by younger entrants, sometimes below the age of ten, of common birds I see in my garden, or the park - robins, seagulls, blackbirds and bluetits. These wonderful shots capture the sheen on every feather, the breath of a thrush at dawn in an autumn meadow, a perky robin defending its territory in pristine snow. And sometimes, the narrative paragraph which accompanies the photograph indicates that the photos is not the result of hours of patient waiting, but chance. A serendipitous, once-in-a-lifetime, lightening-strike chance where perfection is seen through the lens of a camera, and captured.
My partner asked me if I was encouraged or disheartened in my own efforts by the wonderful images on show.
I am discouraged by the underwater, Andes shots of rare and endangered species with people spending months waiting for the right shot; as a communications consultant, that rugged life is unlikely to be mine. However, a photo taken in my garden, or the local park, with fingers metaphorically crossed, which emerges as perfect - that I might aspire to.
So am I setting my sights lower? Some might say so. Looking at some of the photographs, I think not. But the spontenaeity of the photograph seems somehow right with that kind of shot, and after all, what are the chances of a perfect shot? It would take some application which might, at the very least, be equal to lying on your stomach in the middle of nowhere for hours on end.
