The Wildlife Photographer of the Year contest is inviting the public to vote for their favorite image selected from a group of shortlisted entries in this year’s competition. Voting for the People’s Choice Award is open until February 2, 2022. Organizers have shared a handful of the candidates below. Be sure to click through to their site to see the rest of the images. Wildlife Photographer of the Year is developed and produced by the Natural History Museum in London. Captions are provided by the photographers and WPY organizers, and are lightly edited for style.
1. Breath of an Arctic Fox. The photographer was watching this little arctic fox as it incessantly called another nearby. Gradually he noticed the fox’s wet breath was quickly freezing in the air after each call. It was late winter in Spitsbergen, Svalbard, and the cold arctic air was –31 degrees Fahrenheit (–35 degrees Celsius).
Marco Gaiotti / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
2. Monkey Cuddle. The photographer was visiting China’s Qinling Mountains to observe the behavior of the Sichuan snub-nosed monkey. The mountains' temperate forests are the endangered monkeys’ only habitat, which in itself is under threat from forest disturbance. The photographer Zhang Qiang loves to watch the dynamics of the family group—how close and friendly they are with one another. And when it is time to rest, the females and young huddle together for warmth and protection. This image perfectly captures that moment of intimacy, the young monkey’s unmistakable blue face nestled between two females.
Zhang Qiang / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
3. Life in Black and White. Dozens of plains zebras showed up to drink at Okaukuejo waterhole in Etosha National Park, Namibia. Packed closely together and moving as one, the zebras lowered their heads to get water and, almost immediately, robotically lifted them again to scan for danger. This went on for five minutes, and their stripes reminded Lucas Bustamante of a living barcode.
Lucas Bustamante / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
4. Hope in a Burned Plantation. The photographer Jo-Anne McArthur flew to Australia in early 2020 to document the stories of animals affected by the devastating bushfires that were sweeping through the states of New South Wales and Victoria. This eastern grey kangaroo and her joey pictured near Mallacoota, Victoria, were among the lucky ones. The kangaroo barely took her eyes off McArthur as she walked calmly to the spot where she could get a great photo. She had just enough time to crouch down and press the shutter release before the kangaroo hopped away into the burned eucalyptus plantation.
Jo-Anne McArthur / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
5. Stay Close. Taking care of a young orangutan requires a lot of energy. Maxime Aliaga spent more than an hour observing this mother in the Hutan Pinus/Janthoi Nature Reserve of Sumatra, Indonesia, trying to keep her excitable baby with her in the nest. Since 2011 the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Program has released more than 120 confiscated apes into the reserve. Their goal is to establish new wild populations as a safety net against decline. This mother, Marconi, was once held captive as an illegal pet, but was nursed back to health and released in 2011.
Maxime Aliaga / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
6. Lynx Cub Licking. Iberian lynx are one of the world’s most endangered cats because of habitat loss, decreasing food sources, car collisions, and illegal hunting. But thanks to conservation efforts, the species is recovering and can be found in small areas of Portugal and Spain. Antonio Liebana Navarro took this image while leading a conservation project based around photography in Peñalajo, Castilla-La Mancha, Spain. Focusing on this cub, he was lucky enough to capture the moment it lifted its head from a waterhole, licked its lips, and gazed straight into the camera.
Antonio Liebana Navarro / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
7. Dolphin Hug. The photographer watched as Federico Mosquera, a biologist from the Omacha Foundation, in Colombia, soothed an Amazon river dolphin. These dolphins are extremely tactile animals, and direct contact calms them. The team from Omacha and the World Wildlife Fund were transporting the dolphin to a temporary veterinarian facility in Puerto Nariño, Colombia, to install a GPS tag in its dorsal fin. The project is part of a broader scientific attempt to understand river-dolphin health and migratory patterns.
Jaime Rojo / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
8. The Eagle and the Bear. Black-bear cubs will often climb trees, where they wait safely for their mother to return with food. Here, in the temperate rainforest of Southeast Alaska, this little cub decided to take an afternoon nap on a moss-covered branch under the watchful eye of a juvenile bald eagle. The eagle had been sitting in this tree for hours and the photographer Jeroen Hoekendijk found the situation extraordinary. He quickly set out to capture the scene from eye level and, with some difficulty and a lot of luck, was able to position himself a bit higher on the hill and take this image as the bear slept, unaware.
Jeroen Hoekendijk / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
9. All Together. The Clark’s grebes on Ly Dang’s local lake in San Diego, California, hadn’t nested for a few years, and he wasn’t sure if the unusually hot and dry weather they’d been experiencing was to blame. Then in 2017 California had twice its normal annual rainfall. With the lakes full, the grebes started to build nests and lay eggs again. The chicks hitch a cozy ride on a parent’s back soon after hatching. This picture was taken a few days after a storm that sadly washed away almost all the grebes' nests.
Ly Dang / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
10. Barracudas. Schooling barracudas at Blue Corner, Palau, in the western Pacific, grabbed the attention of the photographer while diving in the turquoise seascape. Yung Sen Wu had been swimming with them for four days, but their formation constantly changed shape, and he could not find the perfect angle. On the fifth day, his luck changed when the fish seemed to accept him into the group.
Yung Sen Wu / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
11. Shelter From the Rain. During a visit to the Maasai Mara, Kenya, Ashleigh McCord captured this tender moment between a pair of male lions. At first, she had been taking pictures of only one of the lions, and the rain was just a light sprinkle, although the second had briefly approached and greeted his companion before choosing to walk away. But as the rain turned into a heavy downpour, the second male returned and sat, positioning his body as if to shelter the other. Shortly after, they rubbed faces and continued to sit, nuzzling for some time.
Ashleigh McCord / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
12. Dancing in the Snow. In the Lishan Nature Reserve in Shanxi province, China, Qiang Guo watched as two male golden pheasants continuously swapped places on this trunk—their movements akin to a silent dance in the snow.
Qiang Guo / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
13. Bonds of Love. Peter Delaney looked on as a herd of elephants closed ranks, pushing their young into the middle of the group for protection. A bull elephant had been trying to separate a newborn calf from its mother. Delaney was photographing the herd in Addo Elephant National Park, South Africa, when the newborn let out a shriek. The herd reacted instantly, blowing loud calls, flapping ears, and then surrounding the young and reaching out their trunks for reassurance.
Peter Delaney / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
14. The Ice Bear Cometh. It is a two-hour helicopter ride from the nearest town to this spot on the Fishing Branch river in Canada's Yukon territory, a location where the river never freezes, however cold it gets. The salmon run occurs in the late autumn here, and for the grizzly bears of the area, the open water offers a final chance to feast before hibernating. It was averaging about –22 degrees Fahrenheit (–30 degrees Celsius), and Andy Skillen had been waiting and hoping that one particular female bear would use this log to cross the stream. Eventually she did just that, and he got the picture he’d envisioned—her fur, wet from fishing, had frozen into icicles and "you could hear them tinkle as she walked past."
Andy Skillen / Wildlife Photographer of the Year
15. The Jump. Karl Samitsch was in the Cairngorms, Scotland, with a friend who took him to a forest where red squirrels were used to being fed. They placed hazelnuts on opposite branches of two trees, and Samitsch then positioned his camera on a tripod between the branches, facing the direction a squirrel might jump. Setting his camera to automatic focus, he waited in camouflage gear behind a tree, holding a remote control. After less than an hour, two squirrels appeared. As they leapt between the branches, he used the high-speed burst mode on his camera, and of the 150 frames, four were sharp, and this one perfectly captured the moment.
Karl Samitsch / Wildlife Photographer of the Year