In an age where our reality is often confined to the glow of six-inch screens, a global photography competition serves as a powerful reminder of the living, breathing world that exists beyond algorithms and notifications. The World Nature Photography Awards (WNPA), now in its sixth edition since its founding in 2020, has announced its winners for 2025. The contest goes beyond showcasing technical skill; it aims to urgently reconnect people with the planet's wonders and highlight what stands at risk of being lost.
A Global Gallery of Natural Wonders
The winning photographs, selected from entries worldwide, are surreal, moving, and often provoke deep reflection. They compel viewers not just to admire, but to stop, look around, and acknowledge the parts of nature we increasingly overlook. The awards are divided into multiple categories, each capturing a unique facet of our planet.
Capturing Behaviour and Art in the Wild
In the Nature Art category, Slovenian photographer Maruša Puhek secured top honours. Her winning image emerged from a personal "366 project," where she carried her camera daily for a year. On a snowy day, armed only with a wide-angle lens, she captured a scene where the snow-covered vineyard and the profound silence became as central as the animals within it.
The Animal Portraits gold went to Khaichuin Sim from Malaysia for a striking macro shot of two vividly coloured lanternflies. Their glowing bodies of green, orange, and yellow against dark bark appear almost hand-painted, highlighting the intricate detail in nature's smallest corners.
Finnish photographer Tom Nickels won the Behaviour – Mammals category with a playful image from Svalbard. It shows a polar bear, ignoring a nearby boat and dolphin carcasses, playing with a stick—a rare glimpse of curiosity in one of Earth's most formidable predators.
From Insects to Landscapes: Moments of Drama and Scale
Australian Georgina Steytler took gold in Behaviour – Birds, Amphibians and Reptiles with a frozen mid-leap shot of a blue-spotted mudskipper on Western Australia's mudflats. The image captures a split-second of raw instinct rarely witnessed.
Belgian photographer Niki Colemont won Behaviour – Invertebrates by patiently waiting 30 minutes in her garden to capture a spider striking a robber fly. This quiet, tense moment underscores that nature's most gripping stories often unfold without spectacle.
In the Behaviour – Birds category, Clive Burns from the UK photographed tens of thousands of red knots taking flight as a spring tide flooded their habitat, illustrating how entire ecosystems move as one.
People, Plants, and a Planet in Flux
The competition also focuses on humanity's relationship with nature. The People and Nature gold went to Robert Middleton (UK) for a serene yet sobering image of fishermen harvesting anchovies in Vietnam, hinting at the threats of overfishing.
Brazilian Marcio Esteves Cabral won Plants and Fungi with a dawn shot of glowing Paepalanthus flowers in the Cerrado biome—a beautiful yet alarming portrait of one of the world's most threatened ecosystems due to deforestation.
Other notable winners include Daniel Flormann (Germany) in Underwater, capturing a young olive ridley sea turtle's perilous journey to the ocean, and Jake Mosher (USA) in Planet Earth’s Landscapes and Environments, who spent six years to perfectly align the Milky Way's reflection in Montana's Hyalite Lake.
The awards also featured powerful images in Black and White, Animals in Their Habitat, and Urban Wildlife. UK photographer Benjamin Smail's image of a pin-tailed whydah against a Gambian fuel depot starkly contrasts industrial infrastructure with delicate beauty, promoting eco-tourism.
Finally, in Nature Photojournalism, Iceland's Aël Kermarec documented lava from the Reykjanes Peninsula eruption overwhelming infrastructure—a dramatic signal of a new era of volcanic activity after 800 years of calm.
The World Nature Photography Awards 2025 collectively act as a visual manifesto. They celebrate extraordinary talent while delivering an urgent, unspoken message: the breathtaking world beyond our screens is real, complex, and deserves our attention and protection now more than ever.
