Best and/or Favorite Images of the Decade

[Jonathan Huyer]

My contribution:

2010: My first wild wolf, photographed from my car in Banff. A ridiculously exciting moment, lasting mere seconds. Fortunately I had the camera on the seat next to me, with the correct settings already dialed in. My heartrate still goes up everytime I look at this shot.



2011: Blue-Footed Booby, Galapagos Islands
It's really hard to go wrong here. We were in a zodiac, cruising by some rocks and this booby was looking straight ahead. I kept shooting until I was sure I got a front-on shot. Pretty fun moment.



2012: Svalbard, Norway. My first experience with polar bears. And the beginning of my obsession with claws




2013: Snowy Owl, Boundary Bay, BC. I heard about an irruption of owls in this area, and booked a flight on short notice to check it out. There were snowy owls everywhere! It was utterly incredible.




2014: I booked a crazy low-odds trip to northern Manitoba to try to see a polar bear cub emerge from the den with its mother, and it actually worked out! This is still my favourite photo of all time, taken in extreme cold during a ridiculous wind storm.




2015: It's not too often we get a nice show of northern lights here, but when it does work out, it can be fantastic. When I saw the result of this shot on my LCD, I nearly fell over backwards. Photographed in Banff in April.




2016: I had an opportunity to join an exploratory photography trip to Baffin Island, in northern Canada, and I couldn't pass it up. Again it was a risky trip in terms of chance for success, and we spent 4 full days searching before we saw anything at all. And then this happened -- we came across a mother and cubs, just after they had finished eating a seal on the ice.




2017: Puma cub in Patagonia, Chile. Sometimes you just get ridiculously lucky. I spent a week looking for these cats, and most of the time when we'd see them, they'd be sleeping behind a bush, 100 metres away. But then this cub got up, walked right towards us, and gave us this pose. How does this even happen? I still can't believe it.




2018: Mana Pools National Park, Zimbabwe. I desperately wanted to see a Wild Dog on this trip. They are such incredible animals, and I find them stunningly beautiful. It took a couple days of searching, but then we found the pack resting under a tree. I was well above cloud nine.




2019: Pantanal, Brazil. We got a radio call of a jaguar walking along the riverbank, so we raced out to the location. We were late on the scene, and several other boats were already jockeying for position. We spotted this tree about 100 metres away, so we moved over there and crossed our fingers that the cat would come our way and strike a pose. And then it actually happened! We were the only boat to get the shot.




All the best for the 2020's, everyone!

[PatrickH]

All spectacular, but mom and cub is truly special. The pose, light, blowing snow... just wow.