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BG Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Teacher's Notes

Produced by the Education Unit at The Natural History Museum London. More detailed technical information about photography can be found in the Explainer's notes.

Making educational use of the exhibition

Each year, the exhibition features some remarkable photographs of wildlife from across the world. The pictures can be dramatic and moving, beautiful and inspiring, or intriguing and informative.

It may not be immediately obvious how to fit the exhibition into your teaching plans. That's were these notes are useful. On the following pages you will find suggested activities involving wildlife photographs, mainly related to themes in science, art, English or humanities.

You can use these ideas with any collection of wildlife photographs in the classroom - or the exhibition on a visit. We hope you will find that they add an extra dimension to your work on living things in science, or a useful stimulus in other areas.

The notes include background information and activity ideas on these themes:

Groundwork (preparation)

What is 'wildlife'?
Collect wildlife pictures
Classification
Judge for yourself

Using photographs in classroom or exhibition (on-site activities)

What does this picture tell you?
How does it make you feel?
How do you respond to different kinds of animals?
Anthropomorphism - what does it mean?
Why did the photographer take this picture?

Follow up work

Judge (again) for yourself
Take some pictures yourself
Find out more about photography

Groundwork (preparation)

What is 'wildlife'?

Background notes	Activities
Many children think of wildlife as animals from exotic places. But wildlife includes plants and fungi and also includes things from closer to home. Pets and farm animals should not be included, but almost any other living thing could be considered to be wildlife.	Brainstorm the names of living things that children would describe as wildlife. Challenge if necessary and encourage them to include other kinds of animal and plant - especially local varieties.

Collect wildlife pictures

It will help to prepare for a visit to the exhibition if you collect a set of wildlife pictures. Good sources include wildlife magazines, the internet, old natural history books.

Ask children to bring in as many photographs of wildlife as they can find.

Select those that best demonstrate the ideas you want to explore.

It is useful to establish broad groupings for the animals and other wildlife in the pictures you have. In particular it might be useful to distinguish flowering plants, trees, lichen and fungi and to distinguish between insects, other invertebrates, fish, birds, amphibians, reptiles and mammals.

Ask the children to sort a set of pictures to put the animals and/or plants shown into groups - each picture may show several species.

Different children may devise different groupings. It is useful to reach a consensus and establish a shared vocabulary for further discussion.

It will be interesting to discover whether the activities influence children's ideas. You can do this by finding out their opinions at the beginning and end of the work and making comparisons.

Ask children to rank 10 pictures in order as if they were judging a competition. Ask them to justify their decisions and record ranks and reasons.

Classification

Ask the children to sort a set of pictures to put the animals and/or plants shown into groups - each picture may show several species.

Different children may devise different groupings. It is useful to reach a consensus and establish a shared vocabulary for further discussion.

Judge for yourself

It will be interesting to discover whether the activities influence children's ideas. You can do this by finding out their opinions at the beginning and end of the work and making comparisons.

Ask children to rank 10 pictures in order as if they were judging a competition. Ask them to justify their decisions and record ranks and reasons.

Using photographs

What does this picture tell you?

Background notes

Activities

A picture could tell you what a species looks like. But it could tell you a great deal more, including:

where the species lives
how an animal moves, feeds or reproduces
how living things interact

Your eye could be drawn to one activity in a picture - for example a crocodile biting a wildebeest's nose - that distracts you from noticing other information, such as the habitat or the behaviour of the other animals.

Decide what aspect/s of wildlife behaviour you want to focus on. Select a small number of pictures. Brainstorm with the children how much information the pictures give about each of these aspects:

what the species looks like
where the species lives
how an animal moves
how an animal feeds and what it eats
how an animal reproduces
how living things interact

How does it make you feel?

A picture might amaze you with new information - for example the length of a chameleon's tongue, the shape and colour of a flower, a bird's nest made from coat hangers. A picture could impress you with the beauty of the natural world, or distress or amuse you.	Ask the children to discuss their emotional responses to the pictures - are they interested, amused, amazed, disgusted, upset, astonished, awed, distressed? What information in the picture has given this response? Develop creative writing for different audiences around this idea. You could write captions for an exhibition, newspaper articles reviewing the photographs, or letters to a friend. Some pictures might inspire writing to other organizations about their content - for example, any picture showing an endangered animal, or an animal being treated inappropriately.
Most people respond strongly to pictures of apes and monkeys, and quite strongly to pictures of other mammals, but less strongly to pictures of birds, amphibians, reptiles and fishes. Pictures of insects, other invertebrates and plants are less likely to produce an emotionally charged response.	Ask children to rank pictures of animals in order of interest. Compare their responses from the brainstorm above with the kind of animal in the picture. Are the emotions of distress, amusement, anger more strongly linked with pictures of mammals - especially those we perceive as like us? Do the fish and reptiles arouse more general interest, or impress with the beauty of their forms?
Anthropomorphism means ascribing human characteristics – such as emotional reaction, rational thought, and deliberate action to other living things. It's common in the scripts of popular science programs on TV but most professional naturalists try to avoid it.	Ask the children to describe what the animals are doing in the picture. Classify their descriptions according to whether they are describe only what the animal is doing, or if they describe the animal thinking or feeling. Correlate the instance of anthropomorphism with the kind of animal (as above).
Photographers take pictures for many reasons: to record activities they have observed to communicate a mood or feeling to others to trap an image of something unusual or beautiful to 'freeze-frame' something that normally happens too fast to see to 'zoom in' and show something normally to small to see to enter in (and hopefully to win) a competition	Discuss why the photographers might have taken each picture. Do the children think the photographer had to wait a long time before taking the picture, or respond quickly to something unexpected? Do the children think the photographer had to get into an unusual place - underwater, or in a cave maybe - to take the picture? Do the children think it was worth the effort of taking the picture?

How do you respond to different kinds of animals?

Most people respond strongly to pictures of apes and monkeys, and quite strongly to pictures of other mammals, but less strongly to pictures of birds, amphibians, reptiles and fishes. Pictures of insects, other invertebrates and plants are less likely to produce an emotionally charged response.

Ask children to rank pictures of animals in order of interest.

Compare their responses from the brainstorm above with the kind of animal in the picture.

Are the emotions of distress, amusement, anger more strongly linked with pictures of mammals - especially those we perceive as like us? Do the fish and reptiles arouse more general interest, or impress with the beauty of their forms?

Anthropomorphism – what does it mean?

Anthropomorphismmeans ascribing human characteristics – such as emotional reaction, rational thought, and deliberate action to other living things. It's common in the scripts of popular science programs on TV but most professional naturalists try to avoid it.

Ask the children to describe what the animals are doing in the picture.

Classify their descriptions according to whether they are describe only what the animal is doing, or if they describe the animal thinking or feeling. Correlate the instance of anthropomorphism with the kind of animal (as above).

Why did the photographer take this picture?

Photographers take pictures for many reasons:

to record activities they have observed
to communicate a mood or feeling to others
to trap an image of something unusual or beautiful
to 'freeze-frame' something that normally happens too fast to see
to 'zoom in' and show something normally to small to see
to enter in (and hopefully to win) a competition

Discuss why the photographers might have taken each picture.

Do the children think the photographer had to wait a long time before taking the picture, or respond quickly to something unexpected?

Do the children think the photographer had to get into an unusual place - underwater, or in a cave maybe - to take the picture?

Do the children think it was worth the effort of taking the picture?

Follow up ideas

Judge (again) for yourself

Background notes

Activities

Having had a closer look at photographs, and thought more deeply about them, children will have more sophisticated views of what makes a good picture.

Ask children to rank 10 pictures in order as if they were judging a competition. Ask them to justify their decisions and record ranks and reasons.

Compare their ranks and reasons now with those given before the scheme of work. How have their ideas changed? Do they prefer pictures with a serious message or those that amuse and entertain?

Take some pictures yourself

People are often put off wildlife photography by thinking that it needs very sophisticated equipment. Good cameras can help, but it is also important to get to know your wildlife, make regular observations and to plan what picture to take. Try using disposable cameras, or a video camera to capture views of local wildlife.

Take several pictures of one place over a period of time, with any camera and compare to see how the wildlife (plants and animals) have moved or changed.

There is a great deal to learn about the techniques of photography but exploring a few simple ideas might get you (or your students) started. The activity sheet for the exhibition includes activities about the effects of changing aperture and shutter speed. The captions for the photographs in the exhibition provide technical information about each picture. These could be the stimulus for further work.

You could explore all or any of the following aspects of photography:

the effects of changing shutter speed
the effects of changing aperture
types of film
focus
composition
colour versus black and white

Find out more about photography

You could explore all or any of the following aspects of photography:

the effects of changing shutter speed
the effects of changing aperture
types of film
focus
composition
colour versus black and white

Technical notes on photography

Produced by the Education Unit at The Natural History Museum London.