Best Photo of ZooChat 2020: The Nominations

It's that time of year again! This is the competition to see what the best photo uploaded to the ZooChat gallery in 2020 is! I will receive nominations in this thread here, then there will be a second thread with a poll, similar to ZooChat Thread of the Year competition.

Rules for nomination:

1) Photo must be posted on ZooChat and have been taken in 2020. If the date taken (not date uploaded) is not listed in the caption, please click the tab under the photo that says "information." This will give the camera info including date taken. (Photos uploaded in 2020 were not necessarily taken in 2020).

2) Submit one photo and one photo only. Please provide a link to the photo. (Multiple photos count if uploaded as one photo - such as a photo collage).

3) Please do NOT nominate your own photo.

Deadline to nominate photos will be January 9 2021 or until there are 10 nominations.

 

I nominate this Arizona Blond Tarantula taken by @Arizona Docent:


Arizona blonde tarantula - ZooChat

 

2020?

 

That seems like extremely low, given the volume of pictures uploaded throughout the year here...

 

@birdsandbats You made a typo (I think from copying and pasting last year's rules). Rule one should say photos must have been taken in 2020, but you put 2019. It's a simple mistake but please edit the post to avoid confusion.

 

I also agree with @HOMIN96 and would suggest increasing the nominations to at least a dozen, or better yet 15. BTW I am honored to have the first nomination.

 

Any photo from 2020 ZooChat is eligible, but if you need help finding ideas a good place to look is the monthly photo showcase started by @Julio C Castro . Here is a link to each of the twelve showcases from 2020.
January Photo Showcasing - ZooChat
February Photo Showcasing - ZooChat
March Photo Showcasing - ZooChat
April Photo Showcasing - ZooChat
May Photo Showcasing - ZooChat
June Photo Showcasing - ZooChat
July Photo Showcasing - ZooChat
August Photo Showcasing - ZooChat
September Photo Showcasing - ZooChat
October Photo Showcasing - ZooChat
November Photo Showcasing - ZooChat
December Photo Showcasing - ZooChat

 

I started to nominate bull moose by @RetiredToTheZoo but then I noticed the caption says it was taken in 2018. Same issue with a couple I wanted to nominate from @Stefan Verhoeven . Just a friendly reminder to everyone to check the date the photo was taken, not the upload date. Here is an equally outstanding photo that was taken in 2020. My nomination goes to this one by @Julio C Castro :

Amur Leopard “Satka” - ZooChat

 

Oh my, thank you very much @Arizona Docent! I’m so honored to be nominated and I am thankful that so many enjoyed the photos shared by us all that made it what it is today. I’d like to nominate you with this photo, I love the red colors that make this beauty stand out so well and makes me want a super telephoto lens along with the skills required to capture this https://www.zoochat.com/community/media/gila-woodpecker-wild.506207/

 

I apologize for this very beginner question but how do I go about previewing the image when posting on a thread? I have done it before but can’t seem to preview or know how to do it now I can only attach the link

 

There is this Image button next to the Smilies one. Click on it, and copy-paste the image URL (right click on the picture and it should be the 4th option).

 

Could a mod fix the previously mentioned typo? My edit time is up.

10 was picked as it is the maximum number of options allowed on a ZooChat poll.

 

Thank you very much!

 

I'd like to nominate this wonderful photo by @Arizona Docent.

https://www.zoochat.com/community/media/javelina-mother-and-baby.511807/

 

@birdsandbats Since a moderator may not automatically see your post about fixing the date, I reported it directly to them so they can edit it.

Thanks to all for the nominations, but I think we now have a new issue to address. Three of the four nominations so far are photos taken by me. In fact the only nominated photo that is not mine is the one I nominated. While I am honored, I think it is not in the spirit of the contest to have one member dominate the entries. You also mentioned the limit of ten total for a poll. I will offer a couple of suggestions and you can do with it what you like.

One option is to allow twenty nominations and then post them in two polls. The one with the most votes (from either poll) will be the winner. In the case that the two top photos get the same number of votes you could have a runoff. This is true whether or not those two are in the same poll or one from each of the two different polls.

In either case, I think there should be a maximum limit of two (or at most three) nominations for any one member. Once someone (like me) hits the limit no one can nominate another photo by them. Please think it over @birdsandbats and I will be happy to have others give their opinion as well.

 

I think I speak for many of us but you got some really amazing photos this past year so it was hard to look past them If you’d like, I can change mine if it helps diversify the nominations but I will say that photo is personally one of my favorites I’ve seen all year amongst any photo showcasing forums!

 

I had the intention of noting potential nominations from the start of the year, but didn't last long. Being a lazy sod, I opened a few of the showcase albums and after dismissing another three candidates for being AD's, I'd like to nominate this from @Stefan Verhoeven

 

Since I can’t nominate one of my own photographic masterpieces:

Southern White Rhinoceros Calf by Zoofan15 posted 26 Nov 2020 at 9:51 AM

I will instead nominate this outstanding photo by @marmolady:

Sumatran orangutan 'Puspa' - ZooChat

There are countless (albeit exceptional) photos of orangutans and their contemplative expressions on ZooChat, but few capture the profile of an orangutan as eloquently as @marmolady has here. Puspa (1975) is known for being unusually tall and slender for a female Sumatran orangutan and if I wanted a photo to illustrate this to someone, it would be this.

 

So after realizing last year that I didn't have any photos to nominate because I couldn't specifically remember any, I spent this year watching media that I liked so that I would have a list to work from. That list ended up being... around 55 photos long so naturally the process of narrowing it down has been difficult. Even now I still am thinking about some of the great ones I've seen; perhaps I will find some other way to showcase or highlight them after this vote is over.

However, for my official nomination I'm going with this photo from @Himimomi:


Skywalker hoolock gibbon - ZooChat

I like this photo for a few reasons. One, it's a photo of a rare and only recently described gibbon species; who couldn't like that?

Another reason I like it is because of the behavior - it's neat to see a gibbon browsing for produce, reaching beyond the boundaries designated for it by the humans. I think it's a good reminder of how these animals really are individual beings, with instincts and desires and ideas; I know that I can get caught up too often thinking about species and collections and ecology, so it's nice sometimes to just watch a gibbon go about its day as it sees fit, just like I might.

A third reason I like this photo is because for me it symbolizes what a lot of people felt this year - a longing desire to reach beyond the safety and security of our homes, as we were surrounded by a pandemic that uprooted everyone's daily lives and routines and put up barriers between ourselves and the others in our lives. This year has been one where even something simple - like collecting salad ingredients - can require a cost-benefit analysis. I know there were a lot of days where I identified with this Star Wars-named primate; hopefully some of you now can, too.

 

I considered this option too, but the one year I didn't have this limit I never got over 10 photos anyway. We'll see how fast we reach 10 photos and depending on how quickly that happens we many increase the amount of photos allowed.