Stunning highly commended images from the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition

By Issy Ronald, CNN

Each of the photos highly commended in the prestigious Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition could be a freeze-frame from some mini drama.

In one shot, a lioness peers over the edge of a rock and faces down a cobra; in another, a sloth hugs the post of a barbed wire fence as if their life depends on it; in another, a lone elephant wades through piles of multicolored rubbish at a waste disposal site.

The Natural History Museum in London, which organizes the annual photography competition, said it received a record-breaking 60,636 entries from photographers around the world this year.

Judges will whittle these down to the 100 images that will feature in the museum’s exhibition before announcing the category winners as well as the Grand Title and Young Grand Title awards on October 14.

The photos were taken all around the world and depict scenes from every angle – from the air, underwater or on the ground.

Some photographers went to extreme lengths to capture these moments. Bertie Gregory spent two months with an emperor penguin colony on an ice shelf in Antarctica, watching most of the chicks descend to sea level for food using ice ramps.

However, one group missed that route and Gregory captured the moment shortly before they had to jump 15 meters (49 feet) into the water, framing their hike across the ice shelf against a cloudy sky and ice floes below.

Meanwhile, Ralph Pace covered himself in petroleum jelly before he dived underwater, in an attempt to protect himself from jellyfish stings while photographing Pacific sea nettles off the coast of California.

Other photographers focused on the often fraught interactions between wildlife and humans, highlighting the ways in which photography can aid conservation and raise awareness of environmental threats.

Lakshitha Karunarathna’s shot of an elephant walking through a waste disposal site in Sri Lanka once again spotlights how foraging in these rubbish tips can be hazardous and even fatal for animals.

And Emmanuel Tardy watched traffic build up as a sloth crossed the road in Costa Rica before the animal reached a fencepost and clung to it. Scenes like this are increasingly common as habitats become fragmented and sloths have to make more ground crossings to reach the next tree.

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