Bond in Motion by Lalith Ekanayake
From sleepy sloths to spectacular spinner dolphins, Nuveen People’s Choice Award features a wide range of incredible moments from the natural world.
These photos highlight the fascination and beauty of nature, and it’s now your chance to help decide who’s crowned the winner.
The astonishing selection includes an unusually pale otter tucking into a fish supper and a little yellow crab hitching a ride on a fluorescent green jellyfish.
From over 60,000 entries, our judging panel has whittled it down to 24 photos for you to choose between. The winning image will be displayed in our Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition in London, which is supported by Lead Corporate Sponsor, Nuveen.
Dr Douglas Gurr, the Natural History Museum’s Director, says, “No matter where you are in the world, it’s time to join the jury and vote in the Nuveen People’s Choice Award to select the photograph set for display in our flagship exhibition here at the Natural History Museum.”
“Whether showcasing fascinating behaviour or platforming a powerful story, this year’s selection of images is truly exceptional, and we can’t wait to see which one will be chosen as the public’s favourite!”
Check out all the shortlisted images below and vote for your favourite.
Lalith was exploring the city of Valparai in the Western Ghats, India, when a curious lion-tailed macaque bounded up the path towards him, carrying its infant.
They’re one of the most endangered macaque species in the world, so Lalith was surprised to see them. Human activity is eroding their habitat, fragmenting their populations and threatening their survival.
This predatory little ambush bug nymph was spotted waiting patiently for its next victim.
Discovered in a flower close to Joseph’s front door in Michigan, USA, it was sitting motionless with its forelegs primed.
If anything gets too close, the bug will grab its prey before injecting it with a venom that digests the target from the inside.
This extraterrestrial scene played out in the dark depths of Lembeh Strait, Indonesia.
While scuba diving at night, Chris noticed a juvenile swimming crab cheekily hitching a ride on a gorgeous green jellyfish. Why the crab is doing this isn’t known, but it could be saving energy, seeking protection or even feeding from the back of the jellyfish.
Lynx had been top of the list for Josef to photograph for a long time.
He finally got the chance to spend two weeks watching them from a hide in Torre de Juan Abad, Ciudad Real, Spain.
During that time, he photographed this playful – if slightly grisly – moment of a young cat playing with its catch. Just like the domestic moggy, it’s common for lynx to play with their food before killing it.
By all accounts, this little baby pangolin shouldn’t be alive.
Its mother was caught by poachers to be trafficked for her meat and scales, before she was rescued in South Africa. Pregnant, she was able to give birth to this baby before she unfortunately died of her injuries. Her offspring is now the living embodiment of resilience in the face of an unending crisis.
Black, or pseudo-melanistic, tigers have been reported from the Similipal Tiger Reserve, India, since at least the 1970s.
Pseudo-melanism is a rare genetic condition that makes the tigers’ stripes wider. It’s likely become more common in this reserve because of the severe tiger population decline over the last two decades. This individual, known as T12, emerges from the shadows as the dark knight of Similipal.
As humans encroach ever deeper into the natural world, animals are having to find new ways to adapt.
In this striking image, a sun bear finds shelter from the rain inside a furnace at a campsite in Kaeng Krachan National Park, Thailand. As if to add to the surreal nature of the photo, a brilliant blue butterfly has landed on the nose of the unfortunate bear.
When wild animals come up against people, they’re usually the ones to lose.
That’s what happened with this poor polar bear cub, whose hungry mother took her family too close to a human settlement.
After being chased out of town, the female bear was found dead with her baby by her side.
A sleepy baby sloth is held tightly in the arms of its mother.
Spotted at the La Selva Biological Station in Costa Rica, the sloths were trying to avoid the worst of the wet weather.
Brown-throated three-toed sloths are used to the rain. They live in the treetops of the tropical rainforests of Central and South America, where they slowly meander along the branches, munching on the leaves.
The ethereal beauty of vivid pink flamingos flocking across an ombre sky is broken up by the stark repetition of industrial powerlines stretching to the horizon.
It took Alexandre a 10-hour drive to reach this spot in Walvis Bay, Namibia. What this image can't show is that once there, he had to endure an unimaginable stench from a nearby open-air dump.
Taken on a camera trap in Miena, Tasmania, this charming image might look like a brushtail possum reflected in a pool of water. In fact, it’s a mother and her baby foraging at night.
Charles had actually set out to record the local quolls. Instead, he managed to document this family of possums each night as they searched for fresh leaf buds, insects and anything else they could eat.
Rows of solar panels stretch across the landscape surrounding the hamlet of Cambridge in Gloucestershire, UK.
Francesco was intrigued by the effect of the image, in which the new, green technology looks like little bodies of water nestled among the green grass.
A flash of metallic purples and greens gives away a rufous-vented ground cuckoo as it catches a cicada on the forest floor.
These birds spend their time in the shadowy undergrowth, making them difficult to spot. This one was following a trail of army ants, picking off the insects that were fleeing the swarm.
These polar bears are resting after their long journey north along the Hudson Bay coast in Canada.
During the height of the Arctic summer, polar bears must wait for weeks for the sea ice to refreeze so that they can start hunting seals again. With Arctic temperatures rising faster than anywhere else on Earth, the future that awaits these cubs is more uncertain than ever.
After spending two weeks watching birds at Huembo Lodge in Peru, Dustin finally got the picture he was after. It shows a male marvellous spatuletail displaying its extraordinary tail while feeding from a flower.
This endangered hummingbird is found only in northern Peru, with the males using their gloriously long tail feathers to attract mates.
While free-diving off the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, Cecile was suddenly caught in the middle of underwater action.
A superpod of hundreds of dolphins had converged on a school of lanternfish and were working together to corral the prey towards the surface. Struggling to keep up with the dolphins, Cecile found it almost impossible to take any photos, but still managed to snap this amazing scene of swirling dolphins and fish.
These bear cubs were seen jostling in the headlights of a car as their play fight took them out onto a quiet road through the woodland.
While bears are not an uncommon sight in Jasper National Park, Canada, it’s rarer to see cubs. Their mothers will typically retreat to denser forest to keep them safe until they’re old enough to go it alone.
Over a period of four months, Peter observed a pair of kestrels courting, mating and raising chicks right outside his living room in Dortmund, Germany.
This moment shows the three young kestrels plucking up the courage to take their first flight. Within a couple of weeks, they were already flying around outside the house before taking off to start their own families.
This photo reveals how many snares had been confiscated in one year in a single national park in Uganda.
Adam joined rangers and volunteers to build the shocking pile of snares and highlight just how urgent the crisis is in Africa. Poaching is a complex problem. Some people turn to it out of food insecurity and poverty, while in other cases it’s exploited by sophisticated poaching syndicates.
With almost caramel-coloured fur, this unusual otter was a rare sight in the Pantanal, Brazil.
It’s a neotropical river otter with leucism. This means it lacks the pigment melanin, causing its pale colouration. This condition can make it harder to hide and hunt, but the otter seemed to be doing OK as it munched on a catfish.
This rather gruesome image shows the fatal aftermath of a sika deer rut in Hokkaido, Japan.
According to a local fisherman, this male won a battle with a rival which then died, but not before their antlers became interlocked. For a few days the surviving stag had to drag around the body of its foe. Finally, it managed to tear the head off, leaving the severed head dangling from its antlers.
An attendant female cellar spider gently carries a ball of her precious eggs in her mouth.
Thomas found the expectant mother in his home in Southampton, UK, and carefully moved her to the safety of the garage. It’s likely she would have spent the next three to four weeks watching over the eggs until they hatched into tiny spiderlings.
In a quiet moment of intimacy, an adult sarus crane touches beaks with its week-old chick.
Ponlawat spent hours each day lying motionless in the rice paddies of Huai Chorakhe Mak Non-Hunting Area in Buri Ram, Thailand. His reward was little moments of peace like this among the nesting cranes.
Look closely and you’ll see a tiny male broad-headed bark spider perched on top of a female.
He’s waiting for her to start moulting, when hopefully she’ll be receptive to his moves and mate.
Despite this incredible camouflage, Artur managed to spot these spiders in Khao Phra Thaeo Non-Hunting Area, Thailand. He first sought out their webs at night, before returning during the day to search high and low for the residents.
See all the shortlisted images and vote for your favourite to win this year’s Nuveen People’s Choice Award.
Explore the natural world through powerful photography at this year’s exhibition.
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