Natural History Museum · South Kensington
Wildlife Photographer of the Year
Back for another year with 100 new images: the world's best nature photography, from polar landscapes to tropical rainforests, displayed in an immersive exhibition of award-winning shots.
Preview: written before the show opened
North of Svalbard, Audun Rikardsen drilled a second hole in the sea ice beside a seal's breathing hole, lowered his camera into it and rigged a motion sensor. Some eight hours later a polar bear walked up and looked down. That picture, Icy Window, is one of the 100 in this year's show, picked from 65,403 entries from 121 countries and territories.
The Museum's preview tells how some of them were made. Bence Máté felt the air move from 30 metres away as tens of thousands of red-billed queleas took off in Kenya. Twins Andrea and Maceo Grammatico only spotted the mosquito on their fer-de-lance's head when they reviewed the photos later. Not every image is gentle: one shows a captive brown bear riding a small motorbike in a Doha circus.
Book ahead and go midweek. Tuesday to Thursday in term time is the £17 off-peak rate, the Museum warns that weekends sell out quickly, and the ticket gets you into the rest of the Museum afterwards.
Editor's pick
The winning images from the competition, 100 new photographs from polar landscapes to tropical rainforests, printed large and lit in a darkened gallery.
Look for
Icy Window
Look for the polar bear staring straight down at the lens through the ice, seen from where a seal would be.
The swift and the plane
Jack Crockford caught a common swift flying in step with a plane coming into Heathrow, both just arriving in London.
Up a Tree Without a Squirrel
A young leopard in the Okavango Delta clings to a trunk while the squirrel it was chasing climbs out of reach.
Hidden Dragon
Try to find the 15 mm lichen katydid in Gil Wizen's frame; the photographer could only see it when it moved.
Pooltime Pastime
An American black bear lounges in a backyard pool in Monrovia, California, a regular visitor to that garden.
Good for
- First-Timers
- Going Solo
Skip if
You can only go at weekends on a whim: the Museum says weekend slots sell out quickly.
With kids
Ages 4–17 pay half the adult price (£8.50 off-peak) and under-4s are free. Some images, like the orca carrying its dead calf, may need a conversation.
Free in the same building
- Blue Zone: Dinosaurs and Ocean LifeThe animatronic T. rex, an 82ft diplodocus cast, marine reptiles, and vast mammal skeletons - the museum's most popular galleries.
- Darwin CentreAn eight-storey cocoon housing 28 million insect and plant specimens. Scientists work behind glass - you can watch real research in progress.
- Green Zone: Hintze Hall and Earth SciencesHope the blue whale hangs in Hintze Hall, alongside fossils, minerals, a rare meteorite collection, and the jewel-filled Vault gallery.
- Red Zone: Earth GalleriesRide an escalator through a giant globe into galleries on volcanoes, earthquakes, minerals, and the forces that shape our planet.
