This rare photograph of a Siberian tiger embracing a tree in Russia’s Far East won Russian photographer Sergey Gorshkov the top distinction of Wildlife Photographer of the Year.
Thirteen-year-old Liina Heikkinen of Finland won Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year, the competition’s other top distinction, for her photograph of a young fox devouring a goose as white feathers fly, which she captured on an island outside Helsinki.
A young male proboscis monkey closes his pale blue eyelids. The photograph, captured by Mogens Trolle of Denmark, won in the “animal portrait” category.
A Manduriacu glass frog snacks on a spider in the foothills of the Andes, in northwestern Ecuador. This photograph, by Jaime Culebras of Spain, won in the “behaviour: amphibians and reptiles” category. Glass frogs are keystone species—they play a crucial role in maintaining the balance of their ecosystem.
Jose Luis Ruiz Jiménez captured this image of a great crested grebe family in a lagoon in western Spain by floating a camera and hiding under a camouflaged tent. The photo won the bird behaviour category for its intimate portrayal of a parent feeding its open-mouthed chick.
Frank Deschandol’s photograph of two wasps about to enter their nest holes won the award in the invertebrate behaviour category. Deschandol captured the moment near his home by setting up an infrared beam that would be triggered by the movement of a wasp. He was hoping to capture a cuckoo wasp (left) and ended up capturing a red-banded sand wasp as well.
It took photographer Shanyuan Li six years to capture this rare picture of a family of Pallas’s cats on the remote steppes of the Qinghai Tibet Plateau in northwest China. The photograph won the award for the mammal behaviour category. These small cats are normally solitary, hard to find, and mostly active at dawn and dusk.
Gabriel Eisenband made this photograph of white arnica daisies, found only in Colombia. It won in the plants and fungi category. Eisenband used a long exposure to capture the clouds flowing over the high peak without any blur of movement among the plants.
Songda Cai of China won the underwater photography award for this photo of a tiny diamondback squid paralarva flitting in the deep water during a night dive off the coast of Anilao in the Philippines.
Alex Badyaev, of Russia and the United States, photographed this Cordilleran flycatcher outside of his cabin in Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front. To capture the photo, which won for urban wildlife, Badyaev hid his camera behind a large piece of bark on a spruce tree.
Italy's Luciano Gaudenzio photographed lava flowing from a crevice in Mount Etna. The image won the “Earth’s environments” category. To get to the scene, Luciano and his colleagues trekked for several hours up the north side of the volcano.
For her photo of a performing polar bear in a traveling Russian circus on ice, Kirsten Luce of the U.S. won the “Wildlife Photojournalism: Single Image” award. The polar bear, wearing a muzzle, is directed to perform tricks and is controlled by a metal rod. When not doing tricks, the polar bears would lay down and rub their bodies on the icy ground. The image appeared in the National Geographic story Suffering Unseen: the Dark Truth Behind Wildlife Tourism.
Paul Hilton won the “Wildlife Photojournalism: Story” award for his work documenting the global wildlife trade. This image shows a young pig-tailed macaque chained to a wooden cage in Bali’s bird market.
Alberto Fantoni of Italy won the “Rising Star Portfolio” award for his work documenting birds in the Mediterranean. In this image, on the steep cliffs of a Sardinian island, a male Eleonora’s falcon brings his mate food.
Ripan Biswas of India captures a rare meeting between fierce predators: a giant riverine beetle, which hunts prey on the ground, and weaver ants, which typically hunt insects in the trees. The photograph, captured on a dry riverbed in Buxa Tiger Reserve, West Bengal, India, was part of Biswas’ winning package for the portfolio award, which honoured a range of his work.