We've Picked The Best Images From The Nature Photographer Of The Year Awards

Nature's best

Curious Guanaco

A Graceful Flight

Gone Fishing

Disturbing Shadow

March of the Mussels

Shrinking World

Black Lava Beach

Giant Octopus Dofleini

Amino Acids Mimicking Nature

My Pet Tiger

Besties

Brace!

Taken by a Ghost

This somewhat self-conscious looking ghost crab was snapped with its prey, an unfortunate turtle hatchling, on a beach on Desroches Island in the Seychelles. Photographer Pandora Maund had been hoping to witness and photograph the turtle hatchlings making their way to the sea as the sun rose. 

“The hatchlings instinctively wait until the sand cools, indicating nighttime, when there’s less risk of predation. As the sun rises, they use its light to guide them to the sea,” she says. Only around one in every 1,000 hatchlings survive to adulthood and this image sadly helps explain why.

Colourful Seagull

Ocean Dance

Taking Care of the Male

Milky Way

Stinging Elegance

Franco Banfi spotted this stunning, but also stinging, Portuguese man o’ war in the Caribbean sea. It was surrounded by tiny bluebotttle fish who are partly immune to its venom and thus swim among its tentacles to protect themselves from other predators.

Franco carefully approached the man o’ war from below the surface to avoid the tentacles and managed to perfectly frame its elaborate shape. Its almost transparent gas-filled bladder and “colors, ranging from pink, to purple, to violet in total contrast with the clear blue of the marine water, made for a delicate portrait,” he says.

Aeolus

Banded Pincer Weed

Although it looks more like a vividly imagined fantasy forest, what we’re actually seeing in this image is banded pincer weed viewed under UV light to reveal its hidden auto-fluorescing structure. The chlorophyll in the pincer weed fluoresces red while dead and dying cells fluoresce yellow and orange. 

Unicellular organisms such as diatoms, other algae, and bacteria which live in the transparent slime covering the weed, appear as fluorescing red dots.

Emerald Gem

Fallen Angel

Deer in Golden Light

Ghostly Beauty

Love in the Deep

Fogfall at Belchen

Photographer André Schweizer says the Belchen hills near his home in the Swiss Jura region are an excellent place to photograph the fog waves seen wafting across the treetops in this spectacular image. Autumn and winter are generally the best seasons to obtain such magical photographs.  

However, ideal weather conditions must be in place for a fog wave to form. “The upper limit of the fog, the temperature, and the wind direction are key points,” says André.

Old and Wice Surrounded by Treefield

In Ambush

Rosey Flamingos

Games Between Siblings