The year 2020 produced many poignant and powerful images.
But in a maritime photo contest AustraliaThe public decided to reward an intimate and simple portrait of two widowed penguins, who seem to ease themselves into a hug, looking at the urban landscape on the horizon.
The German photographer Tobias Bumgartner set a winning record at the Ocean Photography Awards organized by Oceanographic magazine in Melbourne.
According to him, two penguins Had recently lost her comrades and apparently embraced near a colony of about 1,400 fairy penguinsThe smallest species of penguin with an average height of only 33 cm. The population is monitored by volunteers.
“A volunteer approached me and told me that the white woman was an elderly woman who had lost her partner and was apparently the youngest male penguin on the left,” Baumgartner wrote on Instagram.
“Since then, they have met regularly, comforting each other and being together for hours watching the city’s dancing lights.”
Photographer passed Three nights with Penguin Colony before I managed to take this photo.
Initially, he intended to capture an image that “pressures human development on wild animal populations”, but he felt he was successful in going beyond that.
“Between not being able to see any light and little penguins constantly moving around or rubbing their wings on each other’s backs and cleaning each other, it was really difficult to get an opportunity,” he said. “But I was lucky during a beautiful moment.”
See winners and finalists for the other five categories Ocean Photography Awards Or on the award profile.
Below is the winning image in the Photographer of the Year category, which was awarded to Nadia Ellie of Canada in 2020 for an image of a huge group of rays spotted off the coast of Mexico.
