A Look into Winners of 2023 Wildlife Photographer of the Year Awards

The world of wildlife photography can be unnerving sometimes. Visualise a photographer underwater to capture sea horses or some of the wildest species in the sea. Do the same for the videography of how wild animals cohabit in the thick forest. Not to talk of the dessert snake who is always hidden in the sand. Now, this is a superpower that deserves to be rewarded and awarded.

This is exactly what the Natural History Museum in London did. The 2023 Photographer of the Year award went to Laurent Ballesta. A look at Laurent’s golden horseshoe crab is evidence of an excellent wildlife photographer who knows his job. The top winner of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year captured the winning golden horseshoe crab in the protected waters of Pangalatan Island in the Philippines. He has produced some of the most splendid images over the years. He is known to have won the prestigious award in 2021 too.

The next winner of the 2023 Photographer of the Year, underwater was a Russian photographer, Mike Korostelev. His Hippo nursery picture depicts a mother hippopotamus with its offspring taking a rest in the iSimangaliso Wetland Park’s Lake St. Lucia in South Africa. It is disclosed that Mike visited the shallow lake for more than two years to have the hippos used to his boat. He was able to capture his image in just 20 seconds.

For the oceans: the bigger picture category, Dutch photographer Lennart Verheuvel swept the award with his Last Gasp image. The photo shows a splendid orca fighting for its last breath. European orcas are hugely affected by the concentration of chemicals like Polychlorinated biphenyl.

Birds of the Midnight Sun by Knut-Sverre Horn, a Norwegian photographer received the award for the Urban Wildlife category. His award-winning photo offers a glimpse of kittiwake chicks illuminated in an abandoned factory. From the abandoned fish processing factory, Knut-Sverre captured the silhouette of the kittiwakes under a low summer sun.

American photojournalist, Karine Aigner, won the photojournalist story award with The Unprotected. The image gives insight into the killing of unprotected and maligned species, bobcats who are used for the West Texas Big Bobcat Contest. The owner of the winning bobcat gets to take home around £28,000. Aigner’s image seeks to reveal the harsh realities of bobcats.