The Nature Photographer of the Year (NPOTY) has announced the amazing winners of its 2020 competition which takes place annually in the Netherlands but due to the current circumstances was held online this year.
Roberto Marchegiani, a nature photographer from Italy, is the overall winner of the prestigious contest with the photo below of a giraffe in the forest and titled Jurassic Park.
“This image has a fairy-tale quality that goes far beyond a wildlife document,” said Magdalena Herrera, director of photography for Geo, France and the chair of the jury. “The contrast of the dark forest with branches like flashes of lightning and the little giraffe, is astonishing,”
“Equally striking is the difference in scale and the relationship between a vibrant, threatening nature and the living element,” she added. “The result, paradoxically, is a feeling of harmony and peace. We applaud the poetic approach to this moment that was made possible by the photographer’s patience and respect for his subject.”
The Other Winners
The judges chose the winners from 19,547 images submitted from more than 95 countries — a record for this competition. Photos could be entered in 12 categories and the Fred Hazelhoff Portfolio Award.
The Portfolio Award was won by Alejandro Prieto, a Mexican photographer who participated with an intriguing photo project about the wall between Mexico and the United States and its impact on wildlife.
The youth category (11 – 17 years old) was won by the Hungarian Lili Sztrehárszki with a shot (above) of a lesser horseshoe bat (the smallest horseshoe bat across Europe).
“I took my picture on the last day of winter in an abandoned mine of Börzsöny Hills in Hungary,” she said. “It’s permanently closed to visitors for the protection of its inhabitants. I was allowed to enter accompanied by a professional guide.”
The photo shows the smallest horseshoe bat across Europe, the lesser horseshoe bat (Rhinolophus hipposideros). “I attempted to frame the picture to highlight the delicate feet of this bat hanging upside-down, clinging to the rock with its tiny fingers and claws using special locking tendons,” she explained. “The backlight emphasizes the veins under the thin skin and the light hair on the tiny feet.”
The Next Edition of NPOTY
The Nature Photographer of the Year competition is organized by Nature Talks, the organization behind the annual Nature Talks Photo Festival.
You already can enter your own photos beginning December 27 for the competition’s 2021 edition. The Nature Talks Photo Festival 2021 will take place next November 13 and 14.
All the category winners, runners-up and highly commended photos for 2020 can be found here.
“I took this photo in Nakuru National Park, Kenya,” Marchegiani said. “To have a better chance of finding good light, I went on a deliberately-organized safari in the rainy season. Just before sunset my friends and I notice a group of giraffes walking in front of the forest.”
Approximately every 5-7 years, huge flocks of several million mountain finches (bramblings) gather in Germany’s southern Black Forest during the winter. In a unique mass phenomenon, they rest in a small area for a few weeks.
In January 2019, there was another huge swarm on the southeastern edge of the Black Forest near the Swiss border, in a region called Hegau at Lake Constance.
“Every evening, some five million mountain finches flew into a small pine forest on a hilltop to fledge early in the morning,” said Geh. “I was fascinated by the rhythm and coordination of the countless animals in the apparent chaos and I wanted to capture both aspects in the picture.
“The mass phenomenon and coordinated behavior of these animals and the way they navigate their assembling over thousands of kilometers, hasn’t been scientifically fully explained. A miracle of creation and for me a beautiful picture of community and peaceful interaction — something that we humans look for, especially in times of Corona. It is up to us.”
Large numbers of birds concentrate on the coast close to the town of Livingston in Guatemala.
These great egrets, also known as Egretta alba, benefit from the remaining fish that fishermen throw into the sea. In the late afternoon, a strong storm formed in the background, providing a great contrast between the white of the herons’ feathers and the darkness of the sky.
“I photographed the Lesser Mouse-Eared Bats from a small colony established in my home range in Sucs, a small town in an agricultural area in Spain,” Leiva Sanchez explained. “I observed that they sometimes dove into a small pond next to the access to their refuge, so I decided to photograph that moment.”
“After spending few days in Borneo, I got this frame stuck in my mind,” said Vijayan. “Firstly, to get this shot, I selected a tree that was located in the water so that I could get a good reflection of the sky and the leaves on the tree on the water surface. It created a mirror effect that made the photo look upside down.
“Then I climbed up on the tree and waited for hours. This is a regular path for the orangutans to cross to a small island on the other side. This frame confuses the viewer at the first glance and that makes the photo unique.”
Northern Pitcher Plants (Sarracenia purpurea) have evolved to be carnivorous and survive in bog environments that lack nutrient-rich soil. These plants trap invertebrate prey such as moths and flies in their bell-shaped leaves that fill with rainwater.
Recently, researchers at the Algonquin Wildlife Research Station in Ontario, Canada, discovered a new item on the menu for a particular population of these plants: juvenile Spotted Salamanders (Ambystoma maculatum).
This is the first account of Northern Pitcher Plants regularly capturing a vertebrate prey. These juvenile salamanders are a massive source of nitrogen compared to the plant’s typical prey and researchers continue to investigate what this ecological interaction means for both the plants, and the salamanders.
This photo was taken in Guangdong Gaoming Lutian Nature Reserve in China. In the early summer, insects begin the breeding season.
An Ono spider is hiding under the green banana leaves. The babies are emerald-colored. The green small life and the banana leaves merge into a green world.
“I took this image after sunset for better color rendering while hiking in the Araucanía region of Chile,” Pozzi said. “The araucarias are primeval plants that are found in the wild only in a few areas of the planet.
Ancient araucarias were combined with the last shades of autumn shown by the incredible southern beech forest, a perfect marriage between the colors and shapes.
“As the Australian climate fires raged, I knew that it was a story that I had to document,” said McArthur. “Specifically, the stories of the animals, both domestic and wild, who were suffering and dying as a result of the fires.
“Flying in over Australia, I could see a continent smothering in smoke. This photo was taken in Mallacoota, Victoria. Interestingly, this is the very small town where my father, an Australian, was raised.
“When I saw this Eastern Grey kangaroo and her pouched joey, I was abut 100 feet away. I walked slowly to the spot I knew I needed to be, in order to get this shot. She watched me as I prepared my camera and I had time to crouch down and take this photo, the one I had envisioned. Then…she hopped away into the burned eucalyptus plantation. She was one of the lucky survivors. An estimated three billion animals died from these cataclysmic fires.”
“One winter morning in January, taking advantage of the frost, I went for a walk along the river Po in Italy and observed the spectacle created by many branches of larches that had fallen to the ground and were completely covered by frost,” Basileo explained. “It seemed to me ‘Il bosco incantato”(enchanted forest).’”
In March 2020, my wife and I took a group of photographers to the very remote Hornstrandir Nature Reserve in the far northwest of Iceland,” said Gibbon. “We sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to reach our destination and spent five days in a rustic cabin following the blue morph Arctic Fox. We experienced some extreme weather and, on this particular day, gale force winds and heavy snow made for a true Arctic blizzard. In fact, visibility became so bad it was a total whiteout and was difficult to see anything.
“As temperatures dipped to -22 with wind chill, I watched this female Arctic Fox as it struggled to stay upright, the winds battering its body while the cold saw ice forming on its face. Although Arctic Fox are built to withstand extreme cold, these kind of conditions make it tough for them to find food and each winter the mortality rate hits a peak as some perish.
This photograph was taken at Tijuana, Mexico. There are already more than 650 miles of separational infrastructure along the border between Mexico and the U.S. These walls and fences cut through fragile ecosystems, separating areas populated by more than 1,500 plants and animal species, 93 of them listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as critically endangered, endangered or vulnerable.
The border region is home to several species (like the coyote in the photo) whose survival depends on an unfragmented ecosystem stretching from the U.S. to Mexico.
Thus far, an extended network of national parks, archaeological monuments, as well as wilderness and nature reserves, protects important wildlife habitat and cultural resources on both sides of the border.
“I took this photo in Iceland, on the Snæfellsnes peninsula, which is located in the western region of Borgarfjörður, in the west of Iceland,” said Carboni. “The elements of nature: A wind storm, a blizzard, the rough sea and the presence of the birds made for a landscape of haunting and poignant beauty.
“I believe that photography gives us the incredible opportunity to share a message of essential beauty which I think nowadays we need more than everything.
This photo was taken in Finland. In preparation for the summer season, a crowd of birch trees sets off from deep in the forest to assume their seasonal postings throughout the Finnish landscape. Simplicity and tranquility create a Zen-like mood.
“I converted this image to black-and-white to emphasize the texture,” said MacKenzie. “The absence of color allows concentrating on lines and forms without any distracting elements.
