Every year, photographers find new ways to remind us of the beauty of the natural world. The Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition, at the Natural History Museum in London until 30 August 2015, and at other venues around the world, is a reminder of their appreciation for the environment in which their subjects live – as seen in this selection.
Caught in Christian Vizl’s lens, fish swim among the lilies in the Aktun Ha cenote – one of the deep sinkholes in Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula considered sacred places in the ancient Mayan civilisation. The Indian photographer Sitara Karthikeyan saw a group of spotted owlets and was “moved by their togetherness”. The French photographer Fabien Michenet was fascinated by the bioluminescence of a juvenile sharpear enope squid just an inch long while night diving off Tahiti. And for the American Bryan Lowry, getting painfully close to a lava flow from the Kilauea volcano was a reminder of the elemental power of Nature.
