The 12th edition of the annual California Academy of Sciences’ BigPicture Photography Competition celebrates the world’s best nature, landscape, and wildlife photographers.
This year’s contest drew thousands of entries from around 60 different countries, featuring talented amateur photographers and well-known professionals in the wildlife and conservation fields.
Competition categories include Aquatic Life; Art of Nature; Human/Nature; Landscapes, Waterscapes, and Flora; Photo Story; Terrestrial Wildlife; and Winged Life, alongside a People’s Choice award and a Grand Prize.
Chinese wildlife and conservation photographer Donglin Zhou won this year’s Grand Prize for her fantastic photograph, “Lemur’s Tough Life,” seen above, which shows a common brown lemur (Eulemur fulvus) making an incredible leap in Madagascar with her baby on her back while other lemurs watch in the distance.
Zhou hiked across rugged limestone rocks and waited for hours to capture this incredible photo. Zhou is also the co-founder of SKW Nature and has previously won awards for both her photography and ecological filmmaking projects, including The Snow Leopard and Pallas’ Cat Chronicles. Her works have been displayed at the Natural History Museum in London, the California Academy of Sciences, the Zhejiang Museum of Natural History, and the Wildlife Conservation Summit in Singapore. Zhou won $5,000 for her victory.
Category Winners
Alongside Zhou’s Grand Prize-winning photo above, the other category winners are featured below. Each category winner took home $1,000 in cash.
Beyond the winners, the jury of professional wildlife and conservation photographers also selected finalists for each category. These are available to view on the BigPicture Photography Competition’s website.
Alongside the category winners, there will also be a People’s Choice Award. Voting for the People’s Choice award will take place from July 1 to July 31. Additional information, plus a fun photographic memory game, are available on the competition’s website. PetaPixel will feature all the contenders once voting opens next month.
Image credits: BigPicture Photography Competition and the California Academy of Sciences. Individual photographers are credited in the captions.
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