Wildlife Photographer of the Year

I have now been twice, with me_and and swaldman on the 31st, and on the 5th of January with an uncle (to whom I was handing over, appropriately, some of Papa's photography misc.).

Things learned this year: whales exfoliate and clownfish have horrifying parasites.

Pictures I particularly enjoyed: astonishingly characterful seagulls, beautiful choreography of seals, a resplendent quetzal coordinating beautifully with epiphytes, a turtle (with interesting photographic technique, more turtles (blue & glowy), an astonishing shot of a frog failing to eat a weevil, beautifully set off by the lantern it's on, a lobster larvae surfing on a dead jellyfish, a seahorse surfing on a q-tip (gorgeous colours), a handful of iguanas, and some excellent teasels that get to be my next desktop wallpaper.

As ever, it is great fun going around this exibition with walkers: there are startlingly different perspectives from different heights, and most walking adults don't think to crouch down to see what I do. It's great fun encouraging them to.

Also as ever, Simon & I (and indeed my uncle) remain somewhat perplexed by the winners of most categories: broadly, finalists seem to be picked based on a combination of "technical excellence", "interesting story", and "sheer bloody-mindedness", but somehow the winners are very rarely the ones I (we!) would pick.

It's also always a little baffling how many of the non-award-winning photographs (from the People's Choice Award, go vote) end up being sold in the shop & used on publicity; particular shout-outs from me this year to the sloth, the dragonfly, and especially the lilac-breasted roller riding a zebra.

In a general spirit of trying to update at least briefly about Things That I Done

This afternoon: matinee performance of The Nutcracker, English National Ballet, with A. It was the last (or very nearly the last?) performance and it seemed fairly obvious the performers were tired: while the dancers were naturally managing an impressive amount of "this incredible feat of physical exertion? pfff it's effortless", they were also less precise than I'd have expected on timings (so the overall choreography was a bit less coherent than it might have been), and I spotted at least one pretty bad ankle wobble. Costumes beautiful, sets beautiful, brass slightly out of tune on occasion as is the way of brass. The story was if anything slightly more incoherent than usual -- Drosselmeyer was compering the entire Kingdom of Sweets sequence??? Clara and the Nutcracker were not terribly distinct from the Sugar Plum Fairy and her consort??? the Nutcracker kept inexplicably having a mask removed and replaced??? -- but there was a BALLOON and I am v pleased to have seen such a large and professional performance.