Every year, Environment Yukon’s Wildlife Viewing team, with support from Yukon Energy, hosts an art competition and features the winning art on a collectible poster celebrating spring and the arrival of swans.
Posters are distributed across the Yukon to raise awareness about A Celebration of Swans, a festival held annually during the month of April at Swan Haven Interpretive Centre at M’Clintock Bay on Marsh Lake.
The winner of the 2025 art contest was Takeshi Hanatani.
About the 2025 winner
Takeshi Hanatani's photograph is featured on this collectible poster designed by Jen Edwards of Sprucetip Design.
Takeshi Hanatani has photographed North American wildlife for almost 30 years. In 2007, he emigrated from Japan to explore the Canadian Rockies. Since 2010, he’s called the Yukon home, where he works diligently to capture the dramatic beauty of local wildlife in their natural habitat. Takeshi aspires to use the medium of photography to create meaning and evoke emotion for the natural world.
About the photo
Every spring, I travel to Swan Haven and Tagish to photograph migrating swans. I was inspired to take this photograph because of the way the slanted sunlight emphasized the swan’s form as well as its footprints on the ice. Swans are one of my favourite subjects – they are beautiful, powerful and poetic.
-Takeshi Hanatani
For questions about the festival poster, email [email protected] or phone: 867-667-8291 or toll free in the Yukon: 1-800-661-0408, ext. 8291.
