Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2018 announces winners and recognizes 4 South African photographers	
Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2018 has announced the grand winner titles and has recognized four South African photographers with four images across four categories including the grand title for Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2018 awarded to sixteen-year-old South African Skye Meaker.
The Grand Title Winner 2018 was from the Animal Portraits category. It’s The Golden Couple by Marsel van Oosten, The Netherlands.
Dutch photographer Marsel van Oosten has won the prestigious Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2018 title for his extraordinary image, The Golden Couple, which frames a pair of golden snub-nosed monkeys in the temperate forest of China’s Qinling Mountains, the only habitat for these endangered primates. The winning portrait captures the beauty and fragility of life on earth and a glimpse of some of the extraordinary, yet relatable beings we share our planet with.
Sixteen-year-old South African Skye Meaker took the award for Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2018 with his charming portrait of a leopard waking from sleep in Mashatu Game Reserve, Botswana. Skye has wanted to be a nature photographer since receiving his first pocket camera at the age of seven.
Lounging leopard by Skye Meaker, South Africa. Grand Title Winner 2018 for the 15-17 Years Old category.
‘With precisely executed timing and composition, we get a coveted glimpse into the inner world of one of the most frequently photographed, yet rarely truly seen animals,’ says competition judge and previous competition winner Alexander Badyaev.
The two grand title images were selected from 19 category winners, depicting the incredible diversity of life on our planet, from displays of rarely seen animal behaviour to hidden underwater worlds. Images from professional and amateur photographers are selected by a panel of industry-recognised professionals for their originality, creativity and technical excellence.
The list features a total of four South African photographers whose photographs were honoured as “highly commended”. In addition to Skye’s photograph, Cool cat by Isak Pretorius was highly commended in the Animal Portrait category, The meerkat mob by Tertius A Gous was also highly commended in the Animal Behavior category, as was Late-night feed by Susan Scott for her image from award-winning film STROOP – Journey into the rhino horn war.
Beating over 45,000 entries from 95 countries, these five images will be on show in lightbox displays with 95 other spectacular photographs. The exhibition at the Natural History Museum opens on 19 October 2018 before touring across the UK and internationally.
A new category for 2018 is the Lifetime Achievement Award. This year acclaimed nature photographer Frans Lanting is being honoured for his outstanding contribution to wildlife conservation over more than three decades.
Photo by @FransLanting When you work with wild chimps, you can’t hide your intentions—they see right through you. It’s best to be patient and polite. After all, when you’re following them on foot in the forest, you’re on their home turf. Only after we had spent several weeks tracking this group of chimps in southern Senegal did we experience the beginnings of acceptance. In this portrait of a young male named “Mike” you can feel his scrutiny. You can make a difference for the future of wild chimpanzees by supporting the World Wildlife Fund, Conservation International, the Jane Goodall Institute, and Neighbor Ape, founded by primatologist Jill Pruetz, with whom we worked on assignment for National Geographic to cover Mike and others in his community. @natgeo @natgeotravel @natgeocreative @thephotosociety #Chimpanzee #GreatApe #WorldWildlifeFund #Wild_Net #ConservationInternational #JaneGoodallInstitute
The next competition opens for entries from photographers of all ages and abilities on Monday 22 October.
If you have played around with the Enlightenment window manager you know it is, for such a lightweight window manager, pretty impressive. But if you've not enabled compositing, you have yet to see how much you can do with transparency. Although compositing in Enlightenment will require the necessary hardware (a video card capable of using acceleration) and a compositing manager, it is easy to configure.
The simplest method to get a composit manager installed is to install Compiz. Compiz is an outstanding window manager all on its own that is, by default, ready for compositing. With Compiz installed you will have a composit manager that E16 can deal with already installed.
Once Compiz is installed you should be able to set compositing up in Enlightenment. With a right mouse click the Settings menu will appear. Select "Composite Settings" to open up the configuration window.
The first option to take care of is Enable Composite. Make sure that is checked. The rest of the options are all up to user taste. I prefer to have Fading Speed set to slowest (slider to the far left), Shadows Blurred, Default Unfocused Window Opacity near 1/2, and Default Pop-Up Window Opacity around 3/4 on. Once you have selected these options click Apply to set them.
What I love about Enlightenment is that it is a lightweight desktop that manages to pull off enough tricks to impress yet doesn't drag your machine to a halt. With a little hackery, Enlightenment can make Windows Aero look like a sad attempt at a modern desktop.