Station Squabble wins people's choice award

Delighted to see the announcement yesterday of the People's Choice winner at the Natural History Museum's Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition. Voted for by joe public over the last few months I think it's my favourite ever WPOTY picture. Sam Rowley was shooting a story on mice on the London Underground when he lay down on a platform and captured this image of 2 battling mice. He calls it Station Squabble. Rowley's mice are not the scurrying little creatures we very occasionally catch sight of scuttling across a floorboard late at night or in a cosy corner of the garden shed. These guys are straight from Disney - standing anthropomorphically upright and duking it out for a tiny crum of food. Framed beautifully with the tunnel's dark arch looming behind and technically very very good with a tiny and unpredictable area of focus and the silhouetted fighters positioned perfectly. It's an incredibly surprising and magical image to set alongside the more traditional epic images of the exhibition.
WPOTY is always a fantastic exhibition and we'll be taking 60 or so of our older students over the next couple of months - travelling there on the same tube network and hoping for our own glimpse of something magical along the way. If you are thinking of visiting - perhaps over half term - timed entries keep the crowds to manageable levels but as with every major exhibition the key is to be the first people in at the beginning of the day and avoid weekends if at all possible. Ask your children to pick their 5 favourite images and tell you why they chose them - and then buy a big print of Station Squabble on your way out