A kangaroo playing air guitar is the winner of this year's Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards.
“Air Guitar Roo”, shot by Jason Moore, captures the moment the animal seemingly plays in an open wildflower field in Perth. It was taken in August 2021.
The photograph beat 5,300 others by 1,842 entrants from 85 countries. It also won the Creatures of the Land category.
Describing how he took the picture, Moore says he had been out since sunrise hoping to photograph waterfowl at a lake, but had a disappointing morning.
“When I arrived, there were a number of kangaroos in the field," he adds. "The morning light was still favourable so I grabbed my camera and headed off to a spot where I could get down to eye level with my subjects, amongst the biting ticks – the lengths we go to just to get that perfect image.
"I ended up shooting about 40 or 50 frames of the kangaroos with various content including mums, joeys and also some action shots of them bouncing along through the yellow field."
He adds: “The shoot turned out to be a great session, and I am quite fond of several images that I captured. Not many people know that kangaroos are normally fairly docile and even a bit boring most of the time. However, when I saw this roo striking the air guitar pose, it immediately brought a smile to my face, and I knew that I had captured something really special."
In addition to Moore's winning shot, there are also six other category winners. Jacek Stankiewicz's photograph of two greenfinches won the Junior Award as well as the Affinity Photo People’s Choice Award, which is voted for by the public. It's the first time the award has been won by a junior entrant.
Vittorio Ricci won the Creatures of the Air Award for a photo of a striated heron falling out of the sky and into the water, while Otter Kwek topped the Under Water award with a shot of an otter looking like a ballerina in Singapore.
Timea Ambrus won the Portfolio Award with a collection of four images that show a ground squirrel looking like he’s trying to fly. The Video Award went to Lily Bernau for her film about a penguin seemingly refusing to go into the sea.
In addition to the category winners, 10 entries were highly commended.
The awards were founded in 2015 to celebrate the lighter side of wildlife photography while also promoting conservation.
Each year, the competition supports a sustainable conservation organisation. This year, the Whitley Fund for Nature is back. The UK charity supports conservation leaders working in countries across the Global South. Now in its 30th year, it has helped raise £20 million for more than 200 conservationists in 80 countries.
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Will the pound fall to parity with the dollar?
The idea of pound parity now seems less far-fetched as the risk grows that Britain may split away from the European Union without a deal.
Rupert Harrison, a fund manager at BlackRock, sees the risk of it falling to trade level with the dollar on a no-deal Brexit. The view echoes Morgan Stanley’s recent forecast that the currency can plunge toward $1 (Dh3.67) on such an outcome. That isn’t the majority view yet – a Bloomberg survey this month estimated the pound will slide to $1.10 should the UK exit the bloc without an agreement.
New Prime Minister Boris Johnson has repeatedly said that Britain will leave the EU on the October 31 deadline with or without an agreement, fuelling concern the nation is headed for a disorderly departure and fanning pessimism toward the pound. Sterling has fallen more than 7 per cent in the past three months, the worst performance among major developed-market currencies.
“The pound is at a much lower level now but I still think a no-deal exit would lead to significant volatility and we could be testing parity on a really bad outcome,” said Mr Harrison, who manages more than $10 billion in assets at BlackRock. “We will see this game of chicken continue through August and that’s likely negative for sterling,” he said about the deadlocked Brexit talks.
The pound fell 0.8 per cent to $1.2033 on Friday, its weakest closing level since the 1980s, after a report on the second quarter showed the UK economy shrank for the first time in six years. The data means it is likely the Bank of England will cut interest rates, according to Mizuho Bank.
The BOE said in November that the currency could fall even below $1 in an analysis on possible worst-case Brexit scenarios. Options-based calculations showed around a 6.4 per cent chance of pound-dollar parity in the next one year, markedly higher than 0.2 per cent in early March when prospects of a no-deal outcome were seemingly off the table.
Bloomberg
