WILDLIFE, WHILE IT LASTS NATURAL HISTORY PHOTOS CAPTURE THE WORLD AT LARGE.

Byline: Phillip Zonkel Staff Writer

A bottle-nosed dolphin breaching in Scotland's Moray Firth, a herd of red lechwe sprinting across a Botswanan floodplain and a male mountain gorilla picking at a spiny thistle ...

Pictures are worth a thousand words, but it takes only two, beauty and wonder, to describe these photographs, which are part of the ``Wildlife Photographer of the Year'' exhibit at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, on display through Nov. 5.

``Some of these shots are truly astounding; your jaw drops and you think, 'I hope I get one of those shots in my lifetime,' '' says Dan Geiger, the museum's expert nature photographer. ``These are once-in-a- lifetime shots.''

They also can provide a wealth of information.

``Photography is an important part of natural history,'' Geiger says. ``Not only do you need to document wildlife with calipers but with the camera and lens. They can be an appropriate documentary means.''

The world's largest and most prestigious wildlife photography competition in the world, ``Wildlife Photographer of the Year'' is organized by London's Natural History Museum and BBC Wildlife magazine. Launched in 1964 by Animals Magazine, the competition initially covered three categories (mammals, birds and other) with 500 entries. Today, judges receive more than 21,000 entries from 66 countries.

This year's exhibit, the first showing at the museum, encompasses more than 80 pictures in such categories as ``Animal Behavior,'' ``The Underwater World,'' ``In Praise of Plants'' and ``From Dusk to Dawn.''

For Geiger, ``Endangered Wildlife'' highlights the vital role photography plays in conservation.

``If you want to prove that this species lives there, you don't have to collect it and therefore kill it. You don't have to eradicate a square meter of a certain habitat to show there's a high density (of a certain animal),'' he says. ``You can take a photograph. That's an appropriate way to document the species.''

``The World in Our Hands,'' which shows mankind's dependence on the natural world and the capability of inflicting harm, is another way the camera exposes an important issue, says Clare Colley, the museum's manager of enrichment programs.

``Some of those photos can be quite distressing,'' says Colley in reference to the picture of a slaughtered family of lowland gorillas, ``but through those photos we learn what we can do to protect our natural resources.''

When it comes to natural resources, Colley is especially fond of ``Urban and Garden Wildlife.''

``We can find these treasures within our cities,'' she says. ``The nature we have in our cities and urban areas is unnoticed and unappreciated. The exhibit brings it to light.

``The exhibit really records and documents the beauty and wonder of the natural world,'' she adds. ``You're captured by the story each photo has to tell.''

Here's what some of the photographers had to say about the stories behind the work.

--``Lion Roaring'' by Jamie Thom (South Africa). This image and five others garnered the Eric Hosking Award for the best portfolio of six images taken by a 26-year-old or younger photographer.

``To experience a full-grown lion roaring straight at you at close quarters is unforgettable,'' says Thom, who is a ranger at the African Mala Mala Game Reserve and also was named the Wildlife Photographer of the Year. ``This male, though, was in fact not roaring at me, but at some adversaries in the distance, either to maintain his territory or to confirm the space between the groups. This gave me the perfect opportunity to photograph him.''

--``Spotted Mantis,'' from ``Animal Portrait'' by Chalk-Seng Hong (Malaysia).

``This species is very rare and found only in cool places in mountain areas. I found this individual, which measured 4 centimeters in length, in the Cameron Highlands, Malaysia,'' Hong says. ``When confronted with my camera, it reared up like this to protect itself. Their amazing colors last only a few weeks - when they are ready to breed, they turn green.''

--``Bald Eagle With Salmon,'' from ``Animal Behavior - Birds'' by Sylvain Cordier (France).

``I have visited Alaska a few times and only dreamt of taking this kind of picture, the bald eagle seeming so elusive,'' Cordier. ``At the Kenai Peninsula, I watched this individual catch a salmon and then start devouring it on the wing. Maybe it urgently needed food because of the cold, or else it was trying to eat its fish before a rival snatched it.''

--``Hepaticas,'' from ``In Praise of Plants'' by Loretta Williams (United States).

``I consider the hepatica to be the harbinger of spring in Michigan. I set off to photograph the blooms before sunrise, and because hepaticas don't open until the sun has warmed them, I had plenty of time to look around for the best specimen,'' she says. ``This grouping was perfect, with the fresh flowers pushing their way through last autumn's leaves, and the lacy leaf completing the composition.''

--``Wolf Eel,'' from ``The Underwater World'' by Espen Rekdal (Norway).

``In spring, wolf eels come to feast on the magnitude of mollusks that are fed by the strong tidal currents running in the abyss between the islets at Oygarden, Norway,'' Rekdal says. ``Lying half out of a cave, this wolf eel withdrew as I approached. I waited patiently by the cave, and after a few minutes he came out for another look. He was perfectly surrounded by dead man's fingers (soft orange corals), and I shot two portraits of the scene before he retreated back into his cave.

``The picture is for me one of many where I try to show people the beauty of temperate marine life, a virtually unknown and unvisited paradise.''

WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR

Where: Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, 900 Exposition Blvd. Los Angeles.

When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily; through Nov. 5

Tickets: Adults $8, children 5-12 $2, and students/seniors $5.50

Information: [phone] or www.nhm.org on the Web.

CAPTION(S):

4 photos

Photo:

(1 -- 3 -- color) A bald eagle, above, eats its Alaska salmon dinner midflight. Top right, a lion roars at an adversary. Right, a young olive baboon peers over a stump in Kenya to see what its playmates are doing.

(4) The ``Wildlife Photographer of the Year'' exhibit features Jamie Thom's shot of the moon rising over a nonchalant 2-year-old leopard in South Africa.