winners of their 39th Annual Photo Contest

The editors of National Wildlife® are pleased to announce the winners of their 39th Annual Photo Contest.

A selection of the top 2009 images appears in the December/January issue of the magazine, and all of the winners can be viewed online at www.nwf.org/photozone/.

This year, two Grand Prize winners were selected. In the Amateur and Youth divisions, Steffen Binke of Moorobool, Australia received the $5,000 prize for his dramatic, up-close image of a dwarf minke whale.

Binke took the photo while on a dive trip in the Great Barrier Reef. Moments after its eyes emerged from the water for a “spy shot,” the whale approached the photographer for a closer look. Binke was only a few feet away when he used a fish-eye lens to make this award-winning image.

In the Professional division, Robert M. Palmer of Littleton, Colorado, received the $5,000 prize for his action shot of a bald eagle about to capture a starling.

While watching a group of bald eagles that congregated at a local cattle feed lot, he noticed the raptors were climbing into the air to catch starlings and blackbirds—not typical prey for the large birds. Palmer captured this dramatic midair scene of an eagle and a starling with his camera before his weeklong encounter ended and the eagles left the site.

See other winning images at www.nwf.org/photozone/.

The National Wildlife Photo Contest will celebrate its 40th year in 2010. This will be our biggest contest ever, with more than $30,000 in cash prizes! You can enter as many as 25 photos in any of seven categories in three divisions. The contest will open in late January and full information on how to enter will be available on NWF’s website at that time.