THE MOTIONLESS corpse of a dead shark caught on a fisherman’s hook to the flutter of a bird perfectly captured mid flight.

These are some of the world’s best wildlife photography which will be on show in Brighton from Saturday for the first time.

The Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition will be at the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery.

The renowned display – now in its 50th year – features 100 winning photographs.

Many of the photos explore the impact of environmental change on nature and some of the most endangered species.

Janita Bagshawe, head of the Royal Pavilion and Museums, said: “We are delighted to be hosting such a prestigious and world-class exhibition. This is a wonderful opportunity for visitors to experience the incredible talent on display in an inspirational setting in the cultural heart of Brighton.”

Launched in 1965 it attracted 361 entries. Today the competition receives almost 42,000 entries from 96 countries.

The exhibition is part of an international tour which enables the 100 award winning images to be seen by millions of people across six continents.

Visitors will also have the rare chance to view and touch some of the more unusual items in the Royal Pavilion and Museum’s collections which are not currently on display.

Animals such as a gorilla, a pangolin and a giant anteater are among the items which can be inspected closely.

For more details visit brightonmuseums.org.uk or call 03000 390902.

Green Dragon by Will Jenkins, UK Finalist in the 11 to 14 Years category

Relaxing by the hotel at the end of a Costa Rican family holiday, Will was planning on a day hanging out by the pool and surfing – that was until the metre-long green iguana jumped down from the hotel roof.

He said: “I love stories about dragons, and I wanted a big picture for my wall that would make me smile every day.

“I also wanted to impress my dad and brother with a shot of the biggest iguana I’d ever seen. I tried to keep in the shadows, hiding behind one sun bed and then the next, so as not to scare it.”

Selecting a wide aperture to make his subject stand out, Will carefully focused on its eye.

He used a Canon EOS 5D Mark II + 70–200mm f2.8 lens at 200mm; 1/200 sec at f4; ISO 100.

The Last Great Picture by Michael ‘Nick’ Nichols, USA Winner of the Black and White category and the Overall Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2014

Nick set out to create an archetypal image that would express both the essence of lions and how we visualise them – a picture of a time past, before lions were under such threat.

Here, the five females of the Vumbi pride lie at rest with their cubs on a rocky outcrop, in Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park.

Shortly before he took the shot, they had attacked and driven off one of the two pride males. Now they were lying close together, calmly sleeping. They were used to Nick’s presence – he’d been following them for nearly six months – which meant he could position his vehicle close by.

Making use of a specially made hole in the roof, he slowly stood up to frame the vista, with the Serengeti plains beyond and the dramatic late-afternoon sky above.

He photographed them in infrared, which he says cuts through the dust and haze, transforms the light and turns the moment into something primal, biblical almost.

The chosen picture speaks about lions in Africa with part flashback, part fantasy. Nick got to know and love the Vumbi pride. A few months later, he heard that it had ventured into land beyond the park and that three females had been killed.

He used a Canon EOS 5D Mark III + 24–70mm f2.8 lens at 32mm; 1/250 sec at f8; ISO 200.

The Longline Lottery by Rodrigo Friscione Wyssmann, Mexico Finalist of the World in Our Hands category

It had clearly been a monumental struggle: the young great white shark’s jaw jutted out at an ugly angle, evidence of how it had fought to escape from the hook before finally suffocating. Rodrigo came upon the grim sight off Magdalena Bay on the Pacific coast of Baja California, Mexico, after noticing that a fisherman’s buoy had been dragged below the surface by a considerable weight.

The hook was on a long line of hooks, set to catch blue and mako sharks.

He said: “I was deeply shocked. Great whites are amazing, graceful and highly intelligent creatures. It was such a sad scene that I changed the image to black and white, which felt more dignified.”

Such surface-baited longlines may stretch for miles and are responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of animals every year, many of them endangered.

He used a Nikon D300 + Sigma 15mm lens; 1/125 sec at f8; ISO 200; two Inon Z-220 strobes.

Snowbird by Edwin Sahlin, Sweden Finalist in the 15 to 17 Years category

Cheese and sausage are what Siberian jays like – so Edwin discovered on a skiing holiday with his family in northern Sweden.

Whenever they stopped for lunch, he would photograph the birds that gathered in hope of scraps. On this occasion, while his family ate their sandwiches, Edwin dug a pit in the snow deep enough to climb into. He scattered titbits of food around the edge and then waited.

To his delight, the jays flew right over him, allowing him to photograph them from below and capture the full rusty colours of their undersides more clearly than he had dared hope.

He used a Nikon D7000 + 35mm f1.8 lens; 1/2000 sec at f7.1 (-0.7 e/v); ISO 320; pop-up flash

Touché by Jan Van Der Greef, The Netherlands Finalist in the Birds category

A focus of Jan’s trip to Ecuador was the astonishing sword-billed hummingbird – the only bird with a bill longer than its body, excluding its tail.

Its 11cm bill is designed to reach nectar at the base of equally long tube-shaped flowers, but Jan discovered that it can have another use.

One particular bird had a regular circuit through the forest, mapped out by its favourite red angel trumpet flowers and bird-feeders near Jan’s lodge.

To get to the bird-feeders, it had to cross the territory of a fiercely territorial collared Inca. Rather than being scared off, once or twice a day it used its bill to make a statement. To capture one of these stand-offs, Jan set up multiple flashes to freeze the hummingbirds’ wing-beats – more than 60 a second – and finally captured the precise colourful moment.

He used a Canon EOS-1D Mark IV + 300mm f2.8 lens; 1/250 sec at f16; ISO 400; Canon Speedlite 580EX flash + six Nikon Speedlight SB-26 flashes; Gitzo tripod + Wimberley head.

The Price They Pay by Bruno D'Amicis, Italy Winner of the World In Our Hands category

Catching or killing wild fennec foxes is illegal in Tunisia but widespread, which Bruno discovered as part of a long-term project to investigate the issues facing endangered species in the Sahara.

He gained the confidence of villagers in Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco and discovered widespread wildlife exploitation, including hunting and capture for commercial trade and traditional medicine.

He also discovered that the causes and therefore the solutions are complex and include high unemployment, poor education, lack of enforcement of conservation laws, ignorant tourists and tour companies, habitat destruction and the socio-political legacy of the Arab Spring revolts. But Bruno is convinced that change is possible – that tourism has a part to play and that thought-provoking images can help raise awareness among tourists as well as highlight what is happening to the fragile Sahara Desert environment.

He used a Canon EOS 5D Mark II + 17–40mm f4 lens at 38mm; 1/160 sec at f4; ISO 400.