“When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.”

— Ansel Adams

The 2019 Wildlife Photographer of the Year will be named little more than a week from now, and only one thing is certain: My favourite image is unlikely to be the same as yours. Your truth is not the same as mine.

That’s the nature of the beast with any photo competition, of course, but especially one with as many subjective talking points as a nature competition during our current climate crisis. The Sixth Mass Extinction looms, and we don’t need a 16-year-old climate activist from Sweden to tell us that.

Most of us, anyway. (The self-styled contrarians behind the cynically named climate-denying group “Climate Realists” are beyond hope in that regard: Big Oil has deep pockets, and is unafraid to spend large sums of cash to muddy the waters, even as they accuse climate activists of doing the same: harpooning gullible donors, as though saving the planet were just another fund-raising activity. Obscene profits have a way of warping moral perspective.)

The Wildlife Photographer of the Year awards have been no stranger to controversy in recent years. South African photojournalist Brent Stirton’s grim image of a rhino slaughtered for its horn, 2017’s winner, set off a storm of debate about what the award should be — something that upsets and angers, and galvanizes us to action, or something warm and heartfelt, that inspires more than shocks. The slaughtered rhino image was followed last year by a more safe, traditional choice, Dutch photographer Marsel van Oosten’s somewhat routine image of a pair of rare, critically endangered golden snub-nosed monkeys in southwestern China’s Qinling Mountains. At least one wildlife photographer I know — a former judge in the competition — groused privately about the use of flash to capture the winning image; a true wildlife photo, this photographer believes, should be completely natural.

The competition is in its 55th year. This is no fly-by-night affair. The WPOTY award is arguably the most prestigious honour in the field — the Nobel Prize of nature photography — and is not to be taken lightly. This year’s field included some 55,000 submissions from more than 100 countries. Awards in all categories will be announced Oct. 15, with the winners — and those who were shortlisted — invited to the annual black-tie dinner at London’s Natural History Museum. An exhibition opens Oct. 18 and will run at the NHM through the new year.

The shortlisted finalists were revealed last month. I’ve included a half-dozen or so images here that caught my eye, though I couldn’t tell you, if pressed, which is my favourite. My personal bias leans towards photojournalism, and so if I had to choose, it would be veteran Thomas Peschak’s underwater image of a whale looking at a human that appears to be reaching out under the water.

Any one of these would make a worthy winner, in my estimation, but — speaking for myself, personally, I saved the best for last.