The city of Bengaluru came to limelight thanks to a photograph clicked by its young citizen, Vidyun R. Hebbar. The 10-year-old photographer has been declared as the Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2021.
The picture for which he received this prestigious award is titled “Dome Home”. An engrossing image, it shows a web in which there is a tent spider.
The Natural History Museum in London holds the contest every year which is called the Wildlife Photographer of the Year. This year’s winners were announced on Wednesday. This 57th edition saw more than 50,000 entries received from 95 countries.
The Natural History Museum has described Hebbar’s pic as an “imaginative way of photographing a spider”. The Museum went on to add that the picture was perfectly framed and that the focus of the image was spot on.
Roz Kidman Cox, the Chair of the Jury, which decided the awards said: “But the really clever bit is the addition of a creative backdrop – the bright colours of a motorised rickshaw.”
That Hebbar is a budding talent is evident from the fact that the official statement of NHM mentioned that he had been sending his clicked images to the organisation ever since he was eight years old.
Fascinated by those scenes that involve creatures who are generally overlooked, Hebbar looks for them in parks and streets located near his home in Bengaluru to click them. That is what makes his images different.
NHM’s top prize — the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2021 — was awarded to French biologist Laurent Ballesta.
Ballesta’s image captured an underwater shot of camouflage groupers as they rushed to release their sperm with the female fish dropping a burst of eggs. The biologist took the picture in Fakarava, a biosphere reserve in French Polynesia.
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While the image is definitely stunning, it was a long journey for Ballesta as he took five years to get the award-winning shot. He painstakingly visited the Fakarava lagoon every year in July, the time when the annual spawning of camouflage groupers takes place. Moreover, what made clicking difficult was the fact that camouflage groupers are vulnerable species threatened by overfishing.
The Museum announced winners in 19 categories. This year three new categories, ‘Wetlands’, ‘Oceans’ and ‘Natural Artistry’, were added.
