Thousands of keen creatives submitted their professional and amateur captures before 24 finalists were hand-picked. The overall winner will be revealed on November 23.
The finalists’ work showcases the eclectic and wonderful wildlife our planet is home to.
From air-guitar-playing kangaroos and dancing horses, to a mischevious monkey and an upset-looking owl, here is a look at the photos that made the final round alongside the photographers’ descriptions.
“I was driving past a mob of western grey kangaroos feeding in an open field that was filled with attractive yellow flowers.
“I had my camera with me, so I stopped to grab a few photos. I suddenly noticed this individual adopt a humorous pose — to me, it looks like he’s practising strumming on his air guitar.”
“The swamp turtle is surprised, and smiles at the dragonfly resting on its nose.”
“I had visited Suffolk for a few days to try and track down a few target species, but decided on a detour to the RSPB’s Minsmere reserve.
“It was a hot day, and I was cooling off in one of the bird hides, when I noticed this Egyptian goose flying to this small island.
“I immediately focused on the avocet, knowing that it was going to charge in and see off the goose.”
“I know it isn’t a bird, and technically it does not have the faculty of flight, but you cannot fault this leopard’s effort to get airborne.
“Actually, she was being bothered by three young cheetahs and in a particularly poor temper, as the pose indicates.”
“This young chacma baboon is sitting on its mother’s back playing the fool.”
“In late autumn, seals leave the North Sea to give birth to their young.”
“This photo was taken in the evening in low light in the Masai Mara.”
“At Katmai National Park, grizzly bears are in abundance and hence it is a photographer’s paradise. However, the challenge here is clicking a unique frame.”
“This picture was taken in the monkey forest in Ubud, Bali. This is a crazy place where monkeys are king.”
“I caught this scene while watching birds in the Bialowieza Forest. A young greenfinch was still fed by parents, however, from time to time, the birds looked like they were having an argument.”
“Taken at Westerfolds Park, a beautiful and surprisingly wild pocket of land in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, famous for its kangaroo population.
“The mob was enjoying some morning sunshine when this joey decided to get silly and try his hand at boxing.”
“This picture was taken in Spitsbergen during a very cold winter. The white grouse is coming towards me and looks like a snowball with eyes.”
“This great grey owl spent most of the afternoon posing majestically and looking, well, wise. But, for a moment or two after doing some elegant stretching, he/she would slump and give a look of, ‘Is Monday over yet?’.”
“This polar bear cub found this wood pretty amusing and was playing with it when it suddenly stopped and stood up, using it almost like a performer does at times.”
“At RSPB Bempton Cliffs, each year between March and October, about half-a-million seabirds use the chalk cliffs towering above the North Sea to nest and raise a family.
“Gannets mate for life and they return to the same nest year after year to raise their young.
“Lying safely at the top of the cliff face, I was able to observe the affection shown between the gannets each time one returned to the nest. They have a greeting ritual, they rub beaks and entwine their necks; it’s how they strengthen their bond. But it’s also a brilliant opportunity to catch them in various poses.
“I didn’t realise I’d taken this image until I got home but, as soon as I saw it, I laughed out loud. They look like proud parents, posing with their baby — definitely one for the family album.”
When it comes to goods and services, it’s commonly assumed you can expect cheap, fast, or good – perhaps two is a reasonable expectation, but expecting all three can be a fool’s notion. Yet, the Bruvi brewer is designed to deliver all three – to a varying subjective degree which we’ll go further into detail below – brewing beverages conveniently quick, for a relatively affordable price per cup, and from a selection of acclaimed roasters. It also might have solved pod-based coffee’s biggest dilemma: plastic waste.
Bruvi is a pod-based beverage brewing appliance, but was obviously designed with additional forethought compared to its competition about how it might look once occupying a kitchen counter. With a soft cream exterior embellished with light wood accents around its base, handle, and covering of its 70 oz water tank, the Bruvi could be deemed the equivalent of a Tesla Model 3: a tech-optimized vehicle of convenience wrapped in a benignly modern design that blends in easily with everything around it.
Beyond the aforementioned wood accents, Bruvi’s construction is primarily limited to plastic; some parts like its removable tray and top handle feel a little lighter than we’d prefer, and we worry the veneer of wood might eventually stain during overzealous preparation. But overall the sum of Bruvi’s components piece together satisfyingly and clean up easily.
Like every other pod-based coffee machine, Bruvi is engineered to simplify preparing everything from a regular cup of coffee, espresso, Americano, cold brew, iced coffee, tea, infused coffee, and even a matcha latte. Operating the Bruvi out of the box is extremely simple: you pull open the top cover lever, drop in a B-Pod, pull down the lever to puncture the pod, select from a variety of options on its icon-based touchscreen menu, and in a minute you’re enjoying a cup. The machine automatically optimizes 7 different parameters – brewing temperature, brew time, pre-infusion, water bypass, water bypass temperature, contact time – making these adjustments by scanning each pod and also adapting to your preferences.
If you’re someone who just wants coffee fast and now, Bruvi does that with aplomb requiring a scant 5 seconds to heat up. You’ll quickly gain the muscle memory to drop-and-pop B-Pods with frightening efficiency if you’re a multi-cup drinker.
The Bruvi invites this sort of fine tuning to dial-in preferences to your liking via its illuminated touchscreen display. Availability of options change according to the type of pod dropped into the maker.
But for those who tend to sip their morning drink rather than kick back cups in rapid fire, there are a myriad of additional options Bruvi opens up via its choose your own adventure menu system. These additional options illuminate specific to your choice in beverage, with Bruvi automatically identifying whether you’ve dropped in an espresso pod, medium roast coffee, or an infused roast. During my few weeks testing the Bruvi I came to most enjoy LAMILL’s signature Black Onyx pods – a roast I’m already well acquainted with, as I used to live just around the corner from the roaster’s Silver Lake location and have had their barista prepared pour-overs on numerous occasions.
Because of the warm late summer, early autumn weather here in Los Angeles, I was inclined to choose the iced coffee or cold brew option. Bruvi did a commendably consistent job of preparing cups revealing a nuanced spectrum of flavors that would differ according to roast choice, strength, and brew preparation. The LAMILL roast didn’t exhibit the burnt nor bitter flavors many capsule machines tend to churn out, reflective of the quality of Bruvi’s partner alongside the brewing adjustments the machine uses to fine tune each cup. It’s no surprise to taste dark chocolate notes from a South American dark roast, but subtler toffee notes aren’t always there to discern, and Bruvi coaxed the aroma and flavors to a surprising degree.
When it comes to pod-based single serving brewing systems, there’s always the elephant in the room about plastic waste. This issue led Bruvi to collaborate with material engineers to develop a plastic-degrading, enzyme-infused pod technology. Formulated to accelerate plastic degradation, these enzymes jumpstart an organic fermentation process optimized to operate within the anaerobic – oxygen deficient – environment of landfills. The microorganisms eat away the plastic, preventing the creation of microplastics already shown to be leaching into every corner of the globe. Bruvi claims the entire B-Pod (outer cup, inner filter, cap, and lid) shows 84% biodegradation within an anaerobic environment in 534 days; compare that to untreated polypropylene plastic’s 2% rate and multiply that to scale, and you get the picture.
If true, bio-enzyme should improve the environmental footprint of single-serving plastics and metals associated with preparing pod-based coffee. The global $12 billion dollar coffee capsule market reveals the growing popularity of capsules fueled by caffeine and convenience is only going to grow, so it will become increasingly essential for the coffee capsule market – and food and beverage companies as a whole – to integrate similar innovations.
So do I think the Bruvi will replace my Chemex or Aeropress, alongside my burr grinder, and a carefully measured dose of my favorite beans ground fresh to my preference? I don’t think so, as the ritual of preparation is baked into my appreciation of the drink, and it’s still more environmentally friendly to prepare coffee yourself from whole beans, regardless of how efficient those enzymes may be. But it must be said, in the span of sampling a box of Black Onyx Bruvi B-Pods, I found myself reaching toward the Bruvi surprisingly more often than expected, recognizing the machine does a fine job of making some surprisingly damn good coffee.
The Bruvi BV-01 Brewer is available starting at $338, with 20 B-Pod packs starting at $18.40.
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Codijo “Chebon” Yazzie’s beadwork draws the eye with bright colors, bold patterns and beautiful textures. Only an up-close look at his designs reveals the attention to detail and intricacy of the beading. Each “seed bead” is millimeters in size and hundreds of them are strung together to adorn hats, neckties, vests and shoes. The skills he uses in his art are in his blood, carried on through a family legacy.
Codijo Yazzie’s mother, Rosine Tree, and his sister are both fashion designers, focusing on Native designs, and they showcase their work at fashion shows around the country. Last year, they were invited to have their designs in the first annual Indigenous Fashion Show at San Diego’s Sycuan Powwow. Yazzie attended the fashion show as a photographer. “I was inspired by all the designers that attended the fashion show, and I loved all the different styles and seeing the models walk down the runway,” says Yazzie.
Yazzie grew up in the Navajo Nation in Upper Fruitland, N.M. He’s Diné (Navajo) and Kiowa Camanche and identifies his clan as Tsenjikini Ta’baaha’ (Honey Combed Rock Edgewater) Tachii nii (Red Running into Water). He later moved to Logan where he creates his beaded designs. Yazzie’s older sister, Cheyleen, taught him how to bead. They started first with single-needle stitches, then graduated to two-needle stitching. “She also showed me how to do different techniques while working with seed beads,” says Yazzie, who practiced beading on small items for years.
“As soon I got a hang of beading, I [started] making dream catchers, beaded necklaces, beaded handbags, beaded horse masks and beaded elk masks for my close friends and family for gifts.”
In teaching Yazzie how to bead, his sister continued a rich tradition in their family, which has a history studded with artists and designers (going back to his great, great, great grandfather, Haungooah, who has some of his hide paintings in the Smithsonian). “Growing up, [I saw] how talented my family is—watching them doing all kinds of Native American arts, painting, sewing and beadwork and Native American designs,” he says.
Yazzie’s beaded ties and hats are made with seed beads, buck skins and deer bone. “I wanted to do something different for Native fashion,” he says. “My ties and hats can be used for nice events, like weddings and graduations.” He directs photoshoots of his own work using local Native Americans in Cache Valley as his models. He sent some of his photographs to the organizer of the Indigenous Fashion Show in San Diego. Yazzie says she was looking to put more men’s fashion designs in the show this year, and she loved his beadwork and invited him to participate.
As he was inspired by his family and the Native American designers in the fashion show, Yazzie hopes his designs in the fashion show will inspire others. “I want our Indigenous young people to understand how it is important to carry different arts to express who we are,” explains Yazzie. “Our culture is important. This talent needs to be carried on.”
Native American designer Codijo Yazzie says he gets his art supplies, including the colorful seed beads for the beadwork on his projects, from the Native American Trading Post in Salt Lake City. The Trading Post also sells Powwow supplies, crafts, jewelry, blankets and music. Native American Trading Post, 3971 S. Redwood Rd., SLC, natput.com
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