Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Got along to the exhibition at NHM today. Some stunning images, but I was disappointed by the number of pretty mediocre drone images that made the cut. I feel that drone photography is still a novelty and a bit of an unknown entity to the judges. The new perspective still seems to excite them, but I struggle to see the strength in many of the images. There was one of elephants sleeping on the edge of a forest that was a stunning image, though I thought the composition could've still been stronger. I think the two that particularly irritated me were one that was nothing more than a shot of a blanket of bluebells in a forest, and another that that was simply the waves lapping at the black sands in Iceland. Neither were particularly different or special to any other drone photography I've seen.

I also wasn't a fan of all the images being printed on transparent film / acrylic and back lit. I'm not sure if this is something they've been doing for a while, but I'd much rather enjoy the images printed traditionally and lit from the front. They seemingly recognised the importance of this, as the two winners were printed properly at the end of the exhibition.

Be interested in others' views. Now I've turned 40, I think I'm starting to become a grumpy old man!
 
It does feel like, in the last 3 years, that this has been somewhat diluted with expanding the scope into categories like wildlife photojournalism as well as some of the entrants being a little setup. Also there seems to have been a judges bias to some of the more niche forms of photography like underwater photography that needs some quite specialised housing as well as cameras.

Some of the public voted choices also seemed to be better than some of the judges choices too


Tricky01 said:
Got along to the exhibition at NHM today. Some stunning images, but I was disappointed by the number of pretty mediocre drone images that made the cut. I feel that drone photography is still a novelty and a bit of an unknown entity to the judges. The new perspective still seems to excite them, but I struggle to see the strength in many of the images. There was one of elephants sleeping on the edge of a forest that was a stunning image, though I thought the composition could've still been stronger. I think the two that particularly irritated me were one that was nothing more than a shot of a blanket of bluebells in a forest, and another that that was simply the waves lapping at the black sands in Iceland. Neither were particularly different or special to any other drone photography I've seen.

I also wasn't a fan of all the images being printed on transparent film / acrylic and back lit. I'm not sure if this is something they've been doing for a while, but I'd much rather enjoy the images printed traditionally and lit from the front. They seemingly recognised the importance of this, as the two winners were printed properly at the end of the exhibition.

Be interested in others' views. Now I've turned 40, I think I'm starting to become a grumpy old man!
Click to expand...

Also agree on the drone imagery
 
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