An amateur photographer who works in digital advertising has won the inaugural Urban Wildlife Photography Awards for his image of two coyotes on a dimly-lit suburban street in Ontario.
London-based photography platform Picfair organised the free-to-enter competition, which pays homage to the wild creatures living in urban spaces, which proliferated during Covid lockdowns.
More than 6,000 photographers of all skill levels entered the competition from all over the world. Finalists photos featured animals that included pigeons, squirrels, foxes and lizards at home in cities from London to Melbourne.
Picfair’s head of content Philip Mowbray was joined by guest judges that included professional wildlife photographers Melissa Groo (USA), Andrew Budziak (CAN) and Will Burrard-Lucas (UK), plus writer and urban wildlife author Florence Wilkinson (UK).
Andrew Interisano, the overall winner, explained the story behind his image 'Date Night', which captured two coyotes on an urban street at night:
“I thought it was my car that had caught their attention as I rounded the corner, and maybe it had at first, but as I rolled down the window I heard it was another group of howling coyotes that had piqued their interest. I parked, turned the engine off, and frantically went to work with the camera… however, in the rush of that moment I was soon compelled to put my camera down and soak in the scene.”
The 'Nightlife' category was won by a photograph of a rat emerging from a city sewer in Mexico, while an image of a Flamingo taken on holiday in Italy by Hungarian Zoologist Mano Aliczki won the ‘Daylight’ category. The winner of the ‘Fancy Seeing You Here’ category, which was won by public vote on social media, went to an image of a raccoon in a ravine captured by photographer Jill Finney, who only took up her dream of becoming a wildlife photographer during lockdown.
Tanya Jackson is a digital editor and writer for countryfile.com. She lives in Wiltshire and loves campfire cooking, swimming in the sea, rural folklore, barn owls and walking her Welsh collie in the misty hills. Tanya also has a passion for English food and drink – although nothing tastes as good as tomato soup out of a thermos on a crisp woodland walk.
