Pixiq

Wildlife photographers, nature enthusiasts, and outdoorsy folks of all kinds will love to get their hands on Wildlife Photographer of the Year: Portfolio 21. This gorgeous book blurs the lines between stunning coffee-table photography book, informative how-to camera guide, and inspirational shooting volume to create an engaging and beautiful work that speaks to the dichotomy between the fragile beauty and immense power of the natural world.

I love wildlife images and, truth be told, I could pick up any number of wildlife books and glaze over the text and just stare at the beautiful imagery. This book, though, had me hooked into the text from the moment I picked it up. Each image has a story, and after I let my eyes see the stories, I wandered over to the words and found that there wasn’t a fluffy caption in the bunch. We readers get to join photojournalists, nature and wildlife photographers, adults and children alike, in exploring everything from natural disasters such as forest fires or the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, to the deep woods and the daily rhythms of a certain fox, to swimming with polar bears in arctic waters, to watching a mountain goat navigate an impossible cliff wall to get a bite to eat. Absolutely riveting, all of it.

I’m tempted to go so far as to say that you could gift this book to literally any of your hard-to-shop-fors and have a better than average shot at having it be well received, but then I don’t know your step-grandfather on your mother’s side, and though this gorgeous book does come in hardcover, it may not make the best teether for your sister’s 14-month-old. Still, all in all, you really can’t go wrong with such a WOW of a book.

Purchase it on Amazon now!

---

The British Natural History Museum hosts an annual contest that invites wildlife and nature photographers to submit their best work, and the stories behind it, to vie for a spot in the yearly publication, Wildlife Photographer of the Year. Categories include animal portraits, animal behavior, botanical realms, and underwater worlds, to name just a few. There is even a young photographer’s competition and related section in the book. You can visit the Wildlife Photographer of the Year contest page for full details on the contest and upcoming deadlines for the 2012 competition.

If you want to see the photographic exhibition in person, in North America, the exhibit is showing at The Royal BC Museum in British Columbia, Canada, as well as at the Detroit Zoo in Michigan, US. For additional exhibition locations worldwide, you can check the listings on the Natural History Museum's website.

(Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year is owned by the Natural History Museum and BBC Wildlife Magazine.)

---

And P.S. If you like this book, you might like these ones, too: