Wildlife & Nature Shortlist

In the UK, starlings murmurate over their chosen roost site at dusk until, when the light has dropped, the flock descends en masse into the reeds or trees. Their mesmerising aerial displays appear almost choreographed with patterns emerging and dissolving in the sky. Nature has evolved a system that is robust to predation, with many eyes looking out for attack and risk shared among the group. The group achieves this without any leadership structure – the simple interactions between individuals create outcomes greater than the sum of their parts. I make my images by taking multiple successive exposures, which are overlaid onto the same print to reveal motion and behaviour that would be otherwise hidden. I’m interested in freezing packets of movement to enable the appreciation of both the intricate detail and scale of the coherent movement that might otherwise go unnoticed.

Kathryn Cooper is a British photographer interested in patterns arising from chaos and complexity in nature.

She has a degree in Physics and doctorate in network science, researching complex large-scale systems (those with many interacting parts) which has informed her gravitation to using flocking birds in her practice. She spent her early career developing techniques for medical imaging, which she now applies to her nature photography.

She lives in Sheffield, UK and her images are taken across Yorkshire and Derbyshire.