올해의 야생사진 작가 & BBC 프로즌 플래닛

[프란치스코]

Wildlife photographer of the year people's choice award

Thomas Vijayan’s image of grey langurs was the overwhelming favourite among the almost 20,000 nature photography lovers that voted in the Wildlife photographer of the year people’s choice award. This year’s vote showcased 25 images, preselected by the jury from more than 42,000 submissions from almost 100 countries. Vijayan’s image will be showcased in London’s Natural History museum Wildlife photographer of the year exhibition until 10 April

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Winner: King of the swingers 

Grey langurs play in the evening light of Bandipur national park, Karnataka, India. Vijayan travelled from Canada to India to photograph tigers and leopards. After a day on safari with no sight of the big cats, his attention was caught by a group of grey langurs playing on a nearby tree

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Finalist: Gentoo penguins in the Antarctic snow 

Finalist:Warrior of the grassland 

The male fan-throated lizard is highly territorial, constantly scanning his territory from the highest viewpoint. This image was taken in Maharashtra, India, during the breeding season

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Finalist: Berries for the fieldfares

A harsh winter in the heart of the Massif du Bugey, eastern France. Driven by the cold, a group of fieldfares gather in a shrub, squabbling over its lifesaving berries

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Finalist:A mother’s courage

A southern giant petrel tries to attack Adelie penguin chicks but just when all seemed lost, the lone mother strides out through the cowering group and saves them

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A walrus in midnight sun. A walrus blows bubbles under a Norwegian midnight sun

Nightfall at the edge of a flamingo colony 

Caribbean flamingos choose their roosting sites for a night’s sleep in Ria Lagartos biosphere reserve, Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico

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Jump! Quickly! 

Three small smelts are scooped up in the humongous bill of a pelican on a morning dive for breakfast, one managed to escape

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The ice jewellery 

A frosty winter in Biebrza national park, Poland. Łukasz Łukasik was walking along the Biebrza river edge, looking for otters, when he heard a strange sound, it was this ice-covered beaver

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BBC Frozen Planet

The BBC will show a major new nature documentary next week, which it describes as the ultimate portrait of

Earth's polar regions: the last great wilderness on the planet

This shot was taken as the BBC was beginning to fly the route that Scott and his men took nearly 100 years previously

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The Taiga in Finland is the greatest forest on Earth, containing at least a third of all the world's trees. The vast stretches of forest are restricted to one or two species of tree, usually conifer. Life is scarce in these forests as conifer needles are hard to digest. Some of the trees can be loaded with as much as three tonnes of snow. This is why conifers tend to be cone shaped with sloping sides to encourage the snow to slide off

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Cameramen Dough Anderson and Hugh Miller created a bespoke underwater tripod which they bolted to the ice ceiling. They were able to get extraordinarily stable, macro shots of ice formations or ice chandeliers, which were inhabited by millions of tiny ice fish whose bodies were full of anti-freeze. Under ice diving is not for the faint-hearted – it is the most high risk type of diving

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Lying belly-down on Antarctic sea-ice at the edge of a small hole, a cameraman gets a shock when a killer whale mother and calf explode out of the water in front of his face. The cameramen said that the only way to get underwater images was to hand-hold a camera on a pole in the icy water, wait and hope. As the orcas came up to breathe they would eye-ball them with curiosity and spray oily breath all over their faces. They added that to be on your stomach precariously perched on the edge of the ice with a killer whale staring down at you was simultaneously terrifying and awe-inspiring

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A sea lion chases a gentoo penguin onto land – both are like fish out of water and the sea lion struggles to make a kill

A humpback whale dives for krill amidst thousands of short-tailed shearwaters. It is mid-summer in the Bering Sea, off Alaska's Aleutian islands. Cold water and long sunny days leads to some of the richest seas in the world. Humpbacks have travelled for months from Hawaii and shearwaters the length of the planet from Australia. Filming from the boat, the BBC watched shearwaters accidentally fly straight into the side of breaching whales, and humpbacks accidentally swallow and spit out shearwaters. At 18 million, this is the largest gathering of seabirds on the planet

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Great grey owl in flight. One of the largest owls in the world with a wingspan of between four to five feet; it is often referred to as the Great Grey Ghost or Phantom of the North as it is so reclusive. Unlike dark-eyed nocturnal owls, it has distinctive piercing eyes, which may be an adaptation to hunting by day

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A massive pack of 25 timberwolves hunting bison on the Arctic circle in northern Canada. In mid-winter in Wood Buffalo National Park temperatures hover around -40C. The wolf pack, led by the alpha female, travel single-file through the deep snow to save energy. The size of the pack is a sign of how rich their prey base is during winter when the bison are more restricted by poor feeding and deep snow. The wolf packs in this National Park are the only wolves in the world that specialise in hunting bison ten times their size. They have grown to be the largest and most powerful wolves on earth

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A massive pack of 25 timberwolves hunting bison in northern Canada. The pack force the herd to stampede after hours of harrying them. Their hope is that a yearling will fall behind. This yearling's fate was actually sealed by another member of the herd, which ran headlong into it

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(사진: 가디언)