Bear sleeping on a drifting iceberg: awarded Wildlife Photographer of the Year
Called "Bed of Ice," the extraordinary photo of a young polar bear sleeping on an iceberg fragment earned Nima Sarikhani the Wildlife Photographer of the Year award.
Iconic. Dramatic. We would also say necessary. It is called "Bed of Ice," the extraordinary photo of a young polar bear sleeping on a fragment of iceberg that earned Nima Sarikhani the Wildlife Photographer of the Year award.
The strikingly striking image also summarizes the effects of climate change at the poles: it was off the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard that Sarikhani set out for three days in search of polar bears, aboard an icebreaker ship.
When she saw two popular bears arrive, she widened her eyes and readied her lens: one of the two, a young male, thus climbed onto a small iceberg and spent the night there, sleeping.
"Nima's poignant image," commented the director of the Natural History Museum in London, Douglas Gurr, who as every year promoted a contest involving more than 75,000 nature photography enthusiasts, "allows us to take away in full the beauty and fragility of our planet. His thought-provoking photo reminds us of the integral link between an animal and its habitat. and serves as a visual representation of the damaging impacts of global warming and habitat loss."
