This year is the 52nd year of the Natural History Museum's Wildlife Photography of the Year (WPOY) award. With over 50 000 photos from around 100 countries, I personally think, it is the best year ever.

I went to the exhibition with my photography club and was astonished by the quality of the pictures. As amateur photographers, we could understand the difficulty which came with creating the photo's exact settings or composition.  Others photos were just beautiful as they were capturing so well the essence of the competition.  Finally some were schocking. Teenagers or not, all visiting the exhibition were so impressed that we were all engrossed by the work on display.  You could only hear the occasional "wow" when a picture resonated with someone.

Photography is one of my passions in life, however, it is sadly not always seen as something children or teenagers can do. Therefore, I am very encouraged that this competition has a below 10, 10-14 and 15-18 category. This encourages young photographers to enter and with phones having such good integrated cameras these days, everyone can become a photographer. You no longer need to know all the tricky settings  to be a talented photographer- just the very basics suffice as long as you have an eye for composition.  So next time you see something breathtaking, take a picture - store it forever!

My favourite piece - Blast Furnace by Alexandre Hec - has managed to capture incandescent lava perfectly, thanks to a fast shutter speed and aperture. The picture has a great composition with a dark background and the stunning bright shape of lava in the middle.

To conclude, this year's WPOY exhibition is amazing. It is open till the 10th of September. I can only recommend you to go and see it for yourself