HOW WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHY BECAME ART

Techniques of photography have changed dramatically over the 55 years of Wildlife Photographer of the Year, the celebrated international competition, but in spite of this, as the editor observes, many of the older film images, 20 years before the arrival of digital, are still among the best. "Often it's not so much a matter of sharpness or depth of field, rather depth of feeling." Sometimes a picture is obviously innovative, other times it has a quiet appeal, but it always connects with the viewer's emotions and imagination. The competition started with 361 entries in three categories, Birds, Mammals and All Other Animals. Now it has more than 45,000 entries with an expansion of categories including a section for younger photographers. This volume is organised round 18 different concepts, including "A Sense of Place", "A Moment", "Wild Places", "Faster and Faster" and "Telling a Story". One of the most delightful images is Anup Shah's "First Encounter", showing a lion bonding with his cub which the mother has just brought back to the pride from the birth den: a tense moment, but we sense that it is going well. The Danakil Depression in northern Ethiopia is one of the earth's lowest and hottest places, and the photographer Olivier Grunewald has descended below the volcano's rim to capture the crust of the magma lake cracking open, though he then had to beat a fast retreat to avoid being overcome by fumes. An armoured ant queen, found by Piotr Nasrecki on the forest floor in Cambodia, glares furiously at close quarters as she mobilises her armoury. Sergei Gorshkov's study of a massive wall of ice, featuring every shade of blue imaginable, has a tiny bear ranging along its top surface. Paul Nicklen captures an Emperor Penguin's jet-propelled exit from the sea with a 1/2000th second exposure. Other memorable images include a colossal leatherback turtle pulling herself down the beach after burying her eggs by moonlight, and a photographer standing on the seabed being photographed face to face with an enormous whale. A visual delight, though the final image in the book tells a very disturbing story of cruelty and greed. Almost 300 images, with explanatory text. 288pp.