The best of Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2012

[n2doc]

Primal fear by Jabruson
Specially commended in The World in Our Hands Award

Heading to the north of Mozambique to photograph elephant poaching, Jabruson came across a group of village children with a tethered yellow baboon. It had been caught when its troop raided local crops, probably because they had lost their normal habitat. "Few animals show such human expressions," says Jabruson, "and this youngster's face spoke volumes."


Everybody loves penguins. They're cuddly, funny and sometimes, like here, remarkably graceful. More interested than most, though, is Paul Nicklen. He has just become the Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer Year for this photo, Bubble-jetting emperors, which was no easy task to capture.
Nicklen was near a colony of emperor penguins in a frozen area of the Ross Sea in Antarctica. He found a hole in the ice where he hoped the diving penguins would exit, leaving him a perfect window to catch them charging up to the surface. He waited underwater, holding himself still against the ice and breathing through a snorkel to avoid producing bubbles.


Practice run by Grégoire Bouguereau
Winner of Behaviour: Mammals

When a female cheetah caught but didn't kill a Thomson's gazelle calf and waited for her cubs, Grégoire Bouguereau guessed what was about to happen. He'd spent nearly a decade studying and photographing cheetahs in the Serengeti National Park, Tanzania, and he knew that the female's behaviour meant a hunting lesson was due to begin. The female moved away, leaving the calf lying on the ground near her cubs. At first, the cubs took no notice. But when it struggled jerkily to its feet "the cubs' natural predatory instincts were triggered", says Grégoire.

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http://www.newscientist.com/gallery/wildlife-photographer-2012/