The winners of this year’s Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards have been announced, and they include a picture of a salmon punching a bear in the face and a picture of a penguin that looks like it has no head at all.
The organization gets thousands of entries for each of its photo categories, which include creatures of the land, creatures of the air, creatures of the sea, a junior award for photographers 18 or younger, an internet portfolio award, and a people’s choice award.
The winning picture was taken in January 2021 in the Serengeti region of Tanzania. It shows a three-month-old lion cub falling out of a tree. The photographer, Jennifer Hadley, was born and raised in Virginia. Hadley got the grand prize because she won the competition as a whole.
It was definitely unexpected,
said Hadley.
How often do you see cats falling out of trees?
She said that even though shots like these are often unpredictable, photographers still need to be ready for the unexpected.
What you can anticipate is potentially something happening so you want to position yourself in the way you think that animals will move, where the light is, how that’s going to affect the speed of your camera,
Hadley said.
Hadley will get three prizes: a handmade trophy from the Wonder Workshop in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, two photography bags, and a one-week safari in Kenya. During the dry season, millions of zebras, wildebeests, and gazelles roam the Serengeti in search of fresh grass and water. She hopes to be able to take pictures there of the great migration.
Even though she won first place, Hadley had just started doing photography full-time. After leaving her job at a big company in 2021, she started a new life as a wildlife photographer. She said that it was like taking a leap of faith.
It was a little bit scary, because I had a good job, well paid, and it’s what I’ve done my whole career. So to make that leap and go into the unknown and try something completely different, that I didn’t know if I could really do on a professional level or not, was nerve-wracking,
she said.
But I just thought, if not now, when?
John Chaney, a businessman, and photographer with more than 50 years of experience was named one of the 10 “highly commended winners” for his photo, which was taken in August 2021 at the base of Brooks Falls in Alaska and seems to show a salmon punching a bear in the face.
Every two to three years, adult salmon make the dangerous trip upriver from the open ocean to the gravel beds where they were born in order to spawn. This trip starts at the end of June and goes on until September. The National Park Service says that between 200,000 and 400,000 salmon are able to make it over the waterfalls each year.
Chaney says that bears have set up homes both at the top and the bottom of Brooks Falls so they can eat the jumping salmon.
Wherever wildlife is happening, you try to stake out a good spot and you just take pictures for hours trying to get the best image, whether it’s a unique facial expression or an animal doing something unique to make the picture special,
he said.
Chaney has said that he doesn’t have any suggestions or advice about how to take a funny shot.
It’s just luck,
he said.
