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The shortlist for this year's Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards has been announced, and there are two Finnish nature photographers vying for the prize. Valtteri Mulkahainen, from Sotkamo in Eastern Finland's Kainuu region, has made the shortlist on a previous occasion — with his photo of a bear happily sniffing a flower. An image he captured in 2013 of 'dancing bears' in a Finnish forest was also picked up by international media. His entry this year, of a grinning bear, is entitled "Smile, You're Being Photographed". "This one-year-old cub noticed me and started to smile. Apparently, it had already posed for photographers before," Mulkahainen said. Finland's other hope is carried by Erkka Badermann, from Kirkkonummi in the south of the country, who snapped his entry while taking photos at a nearby pond in the spring. The weather was wet and cold, Badermann remembers, when he noticed from the behaviour of a female red-throated diver that her mate was about to land on the water. "The red-throated diver is quite a "bad" flyer, and its landings are usually very wobbly: it tries to find its balance with its legs stretched out behind and then lands on its belly to slide along the water’s surface. I like to say they use the water as their runway," he explained. His entry is called "Landing Gears Down". Below is Yle's selection of some of the other images to have made this year's shortlist of 40 photos. The winner will be announced at an awards ceremony in London on 9 December. The compeition, which was first launched in 2015, is open to nature photographers of all levels, and aims to celebrate nature as well as highlight what needs to be done to protect and conserve it.
