The headline image, Ghost Town Visitor by Wim van den Heever, secured both the Grand Title and the Urban Wildlife category. It shows a lone brown hyena wandering among the decayed shell of Kolmanskop, an old diamond mining town in Namibia. Fog curls in around the crumbling walls, the scene at once beautiful and eerie. The twist is that this is an “urban” scene, except the humans left decades ago and the wildlife slipped back in. Wim spent nearly ten years building camera trap setups and refining his vision to get the shot just right.
But there’s so much more beyond that ghostly hyena. The 2025 winners and those honoured span categories from underwater marvels to delicate insect worlds, from fierce predator moments to powerful stories of conservation. Let’s wander through some of the standout moments and unexpected gems.
In the Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year division, Andrea Dominizi from Italy claimed the top prize with After the Destruction. His image frames a longhorn beetle poised on abandoned logging machinery in the Lepini Mountains, delicate, isolated, yet charged with quiet defiance against habitat loss. It’s subtle, emotional, and visually poetic.
The Impact Award, created to spotlight conservation storytelling, went to Fernando Faciole for Orphan of the Road. The photograph shows a baby giant anteater following its caregiver at a rehabilitation centre after its mother was killed by a vehicle. It’s the kind of image that makes you sigh, wince, and smile all at once, a rare moment of tenderness in the aftermath of tragedy.
Each winning image felt like its own fable, a frozen heartbeat in nature that reveals deeper truths about how species coexist and collide.
In Animals in Their Environment, Shane Gross captured Like an Eel out of Water, a peppered moray eel wriggling across rocks in the tidal zone, caught between sea and shore. It’s strange, alien, and oddly human in its determination.
Animal Portraits went to Philipp Egger for Shadow Hunter, a close, moody study of an eagle owl, its golden eye gleaming through soft feathers. The photo feels like being stared down by a secret.
In Behaviour: Birds, Qingrong Yang took the prize with Synchronised Fishing, freezing the exact instant a ladyfish and a little egret went for the same prey. It’s both graceful and chaotic, nature’s choreography at its finest.
For Behaviour: Mammals, Dennis Stogsdill’s Cat Amongst the Flamingos caught a caracal mid-hunt, weaving through a cloud of pink feathers. It’s not a gentle image, but it pulses with raw reality.
Behaviour: Amphibians and Reptiles was won by Quentin Martinez with Frolicking Frogs, showing a cluster of bright green frogs in a brief, delicate mating dance, gone in moments but immortalised forever.
The Behaviour: Invertebrates title went to Georgina Steytler for her wonderfully named Mad Hatterpillar. The gum leaf skeletonizer caterpillar, wearing its own cast-off head capsules like a stack of hats, is both bizarre and endearing.
Oceans: The Bigger Picture was awarded to Audun Rikardsen for The Feast, a stark, luminous photograph of gulls flocking over a trawler at night in the Arctic. The artificial lights cast a strange beauty on an uneasy truth about human dependence on the seas.
Plants and Fungi was won by Chien Lee for Deadly Allure, a UV-lit study of a carnivorous pitcher plant glowing like a neon trap, nature’s deadly design rendered in exquisite light.
Natural Artistry went to Simone Baumeister for Caught in the Headlights, a mesmerizing capture of an orb weaver spider framed against passing car lights. It’s a portrait of coexistence, fragile web against roaring industry.
In the Underwater category, Ralph Pace’s Survival Purse revealed a swell shark embryo glowing inside its translucent egg case in a kelp forest, every vein and fold visible through the light. It’s a reminder that some of nature’s best miracles happen before birth.
Wetlands: The Bigger Picture was awarded to Sebastian Frölich for Vanishing Pond, a strikingly simple photograph of a springtail poised among green gas bubbles on a peat bog. It’s both abstract and urgent, a quiet warning about disappearing ecosystems.
Photojournalism went to Jon A Juárez for How to Save a Species, a haunting, sterile, yet hopeful image of a white rhino foetus from the first successful IVF attempt for the species. Though the pregnancy was lost, the photo stands as a scientific and emotional milestone.
The Photojournalist Story Award was given to Javier Aznar González de Rueda for End of the Round-Up, a perfectly timed capture of venom dripping from a snake being milked, a marriage of danger and necessity.
The Rising Star Award went to Luca Lorenz for Watchful Moments, featuring a coypu nestled quietly among swans, a scene that feels almost painterly in its gentleness.
The Portfolio Award was won by Alexey Kharitonov for Visions of the North, an aerial series capturing frozen wetlands in Russia like giant mosaics of water and ice, equal parts landscape and artwork.
Among the young photographers, ten-year-old Jamie Smart impressed with The Weaver’s Lair, a dewy spiderweb glistening like spun glass, while Lubin Godin, aged fourteen, won for Alpine Dawn, portraying an ibex silhouetted against rising mist, a photo that could inspire an entire adventure film.
These images go far beyond aesthetics. They capture a planet in flux, moments of survival, resilience, and quiet protest. The hyena in a ghost town whispers that nature reclaims what we abandon. The anteater pup clings to human kindness born of guilt. The rhino foetus embodies a flicker of hope against extinction.
Each photograph required patience, courage, and deep empathy, sometimes years of preparation for a split second of revelation. Together, they form a gallery not just of animals but of relationships, both fractured and healing, between humans and the world that made us.
If this year’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year teaches us anything, it’s that beauty and urgency can live in the same frame, and that sometimes the most haunting stories are the ones where nature, against all odds, keeps showing up.
Photo from: Wim van den Heever, Wildlife Photographer of the Year