In Pictures

The winners of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition

Chinese Yongqing Bao named Wildlife Photographer of the Year in a ceremony at London’s Natural History Museum.

It was early spring on the alpine meadowland of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, in China's Qilian Mountains National Nature Reserve, and very cold. The marmot was hungry. It was still in its winter coat and just out of its six-month-long winter hibernation, spent deep underground with the rest of its colony of 30 or so. It had spotted the fox an hour earlier and sounded the alarm to warn its companions to get back underground. But the fox itself had not reacted or moved. So the marmot ventured out of its burrow again to find plants to graze on. The fox remained still. Then suddenly she rushed forward. [Yongqing Bao/Wildlife Photographer of the Year]

The winners of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition have been announced during a ceremony at London’s Natural History Museum.

Yongqing Bao, who hails from the Chinese province of Qinghai, scooped on Tuesday the prestigious Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2019 award for The Moment, a striking image that frames the standoff between a Tibetan fox and a marmot, seemingly frozen in life-or-death deliberations.

Fourteen-year-old Cruz Erdmann was named Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2019 with his serene portrait of an iridescent big fin reef squid captured on a night dive in the Lembeh Strait off North Sulawesi, in Indonesia.

The two images were selected from 19 category winners, depicting the incredible diversity of life on Earth – from displays of rarely seen animal behaviour to hidden underwater worlds.

Beating over 48,000 entries from 100 countries, Yongqing and Cruz’s images will be on show in lightbox displays with 98 other spectacular photographs.

The exhibition at the Natural History Museum opens on October 18. It will then tour across the United Kingdom and internationally, including in Canada, Spain, the United States, Australia and Germany.

© Cruz Erdmann - Wildlife Photographer of the Year — Erdmann was on an organised night dive in the Lembeh Strait off North Sulawesi, Indonesia. An avid photographer and speedy swimmer, had been asked to hold back from the main group to allow slower swimmers a chance to take pictures. That was how he found himself over an unpromising sand flat, in just 3 metres (10 feet) of water. Here he encountered the pair of bigfin reef squid. They were engaged in courtship - a glowing, fast‑changing communication of lines, spots and stripes of varying shades and colours. One immediately jetted away, but the other - probably the male - hovered just long enough for Cruz to capture its glowing underwater show. [Cruz Erdmann/Wildlife Photographer of the Year]

© Riccardo Marchegiani - Wildlife Photographer of the Year — Riccardo Marchegiani could not believe his luck when, at first light, this female gelada, with a week-old infant clinging to her belly, climbed over the cliff edge close to where he was perched. He was in Ethiopia's Simien Mountains National Park to watch geladas, a grass-eating primate found only on the Ethiopian Plateau. That day, a couple of hours before sunrise, Marchegiani's guide led them to a cliff edge where geladas were likely to appear, giving him time to get into position before they woke up. After an hour's wait, just before dawn, a group started to emerge not too far along the cliff and was rewarded by this female climbing up almost in front of him. [Riccardo Marchegiani/Wildlife Photographer of the Year]

© Shangzhen Fan - Wildlife Photographer of the Year — A small herd of male chiru walk along a snow-veiled slope in the Kumukuli Desert of China's Altun Shan National Nature Reserve. The air was fresh and clear after heavy snow. Shadows flowed from the undulating slopes around a warm island of sand that the chiru were heading towards, leaving braided footprints in their wake. From his vantage point a kilometre away (more than half a mile), Shangzhen drew the contrasting elements together before they vanished into the warmth of sun and sand. [Shangzhen Fan/Wildlife Photographer of the Year]

© Zorica Kovacevic - Wildlife Photographer of the Year — Festooned with bulging orange velvet, trimmed with grey lace, the arms of a Monterey cypress tree weave an otherworldly canopy over Pinnacle Point, in Point Lobos State Natural Reserve, California, US. After several days experimenting, Zorica Kovacevic decided on a close-up abstract of one particular tree. With reserve visitors to this popular spot confined to marked trails, she was lucky to get overcast weather (avoiding harsh light) at a quiet moment. She had just enough time to focus stack 22 images (merging the sharp parts of all the photos) to reveal the colourful maze in depth. [Zorica Kovacevic/Wildlife Photographer of the Year]

An enormous image of a male jaguar is projected onto a section of the US-Mexico border fence, symbolic, says Alejandro Prieto, of the jaguars' past and future existence in the US. Today, the jaguar's stronghold is in the Amazon, but historically, the range of this large, powerful cat included the southwestern US. Over the past century, the human impact from hunting, which was banned in 1997 when jaguars became a protected species, and habitat destruction have resulted in the species becoming virtually extinct in the US. Today, two male jaguars are known to inhabit the borderlands of New Mexico and Arizona. But with no recent records of a female, any chance of a breeding population becoming re-established rests on the contentious border between the two countries remaining partially open. The photograph that Prieto projected is of a Mexican jaguar, captured with camera traps he has been setting on both sides of the border and monitoring for more than two years. The shot of the border fence was created to highlight President Donald Trump's plan to seal off the entire US‑Mexico frontier with an impenetrable wall and the impact it will have on the movement of wildlife, sealing the end of jaguars in the US. [Alejandro Prieto/Wildlife Photographer of the Year]

© Ripan Biswas - Wildlife Photographer of the Year — It may look like an ant, but then count its legs and note those palps either side of the folded fangs. Ripan Biswas was photographing a red weaver ant colony in the subtropical forest of India's Buxa Tiger Reserve, in West Bengal state, when he spotted the odd-looking ant. On a close look, he realised it was a tiny ant mimicking crab spider, just 5 millimetres (0.2 inches) long. By reverse mounting his lens, Biswas converted it to a macro, capable of taking extreme close-ups. But with the electrical connection lost between the lens and the camera, settings had to be adjusted manually, and focusing was tricky, as the viewfinder became dark while he narrowed the aperture to maximise the depth of field. Here, the lens was so close that the diminutive arachnid seems to have been able to see its reflection and is raising its legs as a warning. [Ripan Biswas/Wildlife Photographer of the Year]

© Audun Rikardsen - Wildlife Photographer of the Year — Red-hot lava tongues flow into the Pacific Ocean, producing huge plumes of noxious laze as they meet the crashing waves. This was the front line of the biggest eruption for 200 years of one of the world's most active volcanos, Kilauea, on Hawaii's Big Island. Kilauea started spewing out lava through 24 fissures on its lower East Rift at the start of May 2018. In a matter of days, travelling at speed, the lava had reached the Pacific on the island's southeast coast and begun the creation of a huge delta of new land. It would continue flowing for three months. By the time Luis Vilarino Lopez could hire a helicopter with permission to fly over the area, the new land extended more than 1.6 kilometres (a mile) from shore. Luis had limited time to work, with the helicopter forbidden to descend more than 1,000 metres (3,280 feet) and with the noxious clouds of acid vapour filling the sky. He had chosen to fly in the late afternoon, so the sidelight would reveal the relief and cloud texture. Thick clouds of laze covered the coast, but as dusk fell, there was a sudden change in wind direction and the acidic clouds moved aside to reveal a glimpse of the lava lagoons and rivers. Framing his shot through the helicopter's open door, Lopez captured the collision boundary between molten rock and water and the emergence of new land. [Luis Vilarino Lopez/Wildlife Photographer of the Year]

© Charlie Hamilton James - Wildlife Photographer of the Year — On Pearl Street, in New York's Lower Manhattan, brown rats scamper between their home under a tree grille and a pile of rubbish bags full of food waste. Their ancestors hailed from the Asian steppes, travelling with traders to Europe and later crossing the Atlantic. Today, urban rat populations are rising fast. The rodents are well suited for city living - powerful swimmers, burrowers and jumpers, with great balance, aided by their maligned long tails. They are smart - capable of navigating complex networks such as sewers. They are also social and may even show empathy towards one another. But it is their propensity to spread disease that inspires fear and disgust. Attempts to control them, though, are largely ineffective. Routine poisoning has led to the rise of resistant rats. Burrows have been injected with dry ice (to avoid poisoning the raptors that prey on them), and dogs have been trained as rat killers. The survivors simply breed (prolifically) to refill the burrows and gorge nightly on any edible trash left around. Lighting his shot to blend with the glow of the street lights and operating his kit remotely, Charlie Hamilton realised this intimate street-level view. [Charlie Hamilton James/Wildlife Photographer of the Year]

© Max Waugh - Wildlife Photographer of the Year — In a winter whiteout in Yellowstone National Park, a lone American bison stands weathering the silent snow storm. Shooting from his vehicle, Max could only make out its figure on the hillside. Bison survive in Yellowstone's harsh winter months by feeding on grasses and sedges beneath the snow. Swinging their huge heads from side to side, using powerful neck muscles - visible as their distinctive humps - they sweep aside the snow to get to the forage below. Slowing his shutter speed to blur the snow and 'paint a curtain of lines across the bison's silhouette', Max Waugh created an abstract image that combines the stillness of the animal with the movement of the snowfall. Slightly overexposing it to enhance the whiteout and converting the photograph to black and white accentuated the simplicity of the scene. [Max Waugh/Wildlife Photographer of the Year]

© Je´re´mie Villet - Wildlife Photographer of the Year — Pushing against each other, two male Dall's sheep in full winter-white coats stand immobile at the end of a fierce clash on a windswept snowy slope. For years, Jeremie Villet had dreamed of photographing the pure-white North American mountain sheep against the snow. Travelling to the Yukon, he rented a van and spent a month following Dall's sheep during the rutting season, when mature males compete for mating rights. On a steep ridge, these two rams attempted to duel, but strong winds, a heavy blizzard and extreme cold (-40 degrees Celsius or -40 degrees Fahrenheit) forced them into a truce. Lying in the snow, Villet was also battling with the brutal weather - not only were his fingers frozen, but the ferocious wind was making it difficult to hold his lens steady. So determined was he to create the photograph he had in mind that he continued firing off frames, unaware that his feet were succumbing to frostbite, which it would take months to recover from. He had just one sharp image, but that was also the vision of his dreams - the horns and key facial features of the mountain sheep etched into the white canvas, their fur blending into the snowscape. [Jeremie Villet/Wildlife Photographer of the Year]

© Jasper Doest - Wildlife Photographer of the Year — For the past 17 years, Riku, a Japanese macaque legally captured from the wild, has performed comedy skits three times a day in front of large audiences at the Nikko Saru Gundan theatre north of Tokyo. These highly popular shows, which attract both locals and tourists, derive from Sarumawashi (translated as 'monkey dancing') - traditional Japanese performance art that has been around for more than 1,000 years. The appeal of these contemporary performances lies in the anthropomorphic appearance of the trained macaques - invariably dressed in costumes - that move around the stage on two legs performing tricks and engaging in ridiculous role-plays with their human trainers. Photography is banned at shows, and so it took a long time for Jasper to gain permission to take pictures. Recording Riku's performance on stage - here with one of the trainers dressed in a Scottish kilt - he was appalled that such intelligent animals, once considered sacred, are now exploited for laughs. Riku was finally retired in 2018. [Jasper Doest/Wildlife Photographer of the Year]

© Ingo Arndt - Wildlife Photographer of the Year — Fur flies as the puma launches her attack on the guanaco. For Ingo, the picture marked the culmination of seven months tracking wild pumas on foot, enduring extreme cold and biting winds in the Torres del Paine region of Patagonia, Chile. The female was Ingo's main subject and was used to his presence. But to record an attack, he had to be facing both prey and puma. This required spotting a potential target - here a big male guanaco grazing apart from his herd on a small hill - and then positioning himself downwind, facing the likely direction the puma would come from. To monitor her movements when she was out of his sight, he positioned his two trackers so they could keep watch with binoculars and radio Ingo Arndt as the female approached her prey. A puma is fast - aided by a long, flexible spine (like that of the closely related cheetah) - but only over short distances. For half an hour, she crept up on the guanaco. The light was perfect, bright enough for a fast exposure but softened by a thin cloud, and Arndt was in the right position. When the puma was within about 10 metres (30 feet), she sprinted and jumped. As her claws made contact, the guanaco twisted to the side, his last grassy mouthful flying in the wind. The puma then leapt on his back and tried to deliver a crushing bite to his neck. Running, he could not throw her off, and it was only when he dropped his weight on her, seemingly deliberately, that she let go, just missing a kick that could easily have knocked out her teeth or broken bones. Four out of five puma hunts end like this - unsuccessfully. [Ingo Arndt/Wildlife Photographer of the Year]

© Stefan Christmann - Wildlife Photographer of the Year — More than 5,000 male emperor penguins huddle against the wind and late winter cold on the sea ice of Antarctica's Atka Bay, in front of the Ekstrom Ice Shelf. It was a calm day, but when Stefan took off his glove to delicately focus the tilt-shift lens, the cold 'felt like needles in my fingertips'. Each paired male bears a precious cargo on his feet - a single egg - tucked under a fold of skin (the brood pouch) as he faces the harshest winter on the Earth, with temperatures that fall below -40C (-40F), severe wind chill and intense blizzards. The females entrust their eggs to their mates to incubate and then head for the sea, where they feed for up to three months. Physical adaptations - including body fat and several layers of scale-like feathers, ruffled only in the strongest of winds - help the males endure the cold, but survival depends on cooperation. The birds snuggle together, backs to the wind and heads down, sharing their body heat. Those on the windward edge peel off and shuffle down the flanks of the huddle to reach the more sheltered side, creating a constant procession through the warm centre, with the whole huddle gradually shifting downwind. The centre can become so cosy that the huddle temporarily breaks up to cool off, releasing clouds of steam. From mid‑May until mid-July, the sun does not rise above the horizon, but at the end of winter, when this picture was taken, there are a few hours of twilight. That light combined with modern camera technology and a longish exposure enabled Stefan Christmann to create such a bright picture. [Stefan Christmann/Wildlife Photographer of the Year]

© Thomas Easterbrook - Wildlife Photographer of the Year — On holiday with his family in France, Thomas Easterbrook was eating supper in the garden on a warm summer's evening when he heard the humming. The sound was coming from the fast-beating wings of a hummingbird hawkmoth, hovering in front of an autumn sage, siphoning up nectar with its long proboscis. [Thomas Easterbrook/Wildlife Photographer of the Year]

© Manuel Plaickner - Wildlife Photographer of the Year — Every spring, for more than a decade, Manuel Plaickner had followed the mass migration of common frogs in South Tyrol, Italy. Rising spring temperatures stir the frogs to emerge from the sheltered spots where they spent the winter (often under rocks or wood or even buried at the bottom of ponds). They need to breed and head straight for the water, usually to where they themselves were spawned. Mating involves a male grasping his partner, piggyback until she lays eggs - up to 2,000, each in a clear jelly capsule - which he then fertilises. Plaickner needed to find the perfect pond in the right light at just the right time. Though common frogs are widespread across Europe, numbers are thought to be declining and local populations threatened, mainly by habitat degradation (from pollution and drainage) and disease, and in some countries, from hunting. In South Tyrol, there are relatively few ponds where massive numbers of frogs still congregate for spawning, and activity peaks after just a few days. Manuel immersed himself in one of the larger ponds, at the edge of woodland, where several hundred frogs had gathered in clear water. He watched the spawn build up until the moment arrived for the picture he had in mind - soft natural light, lingering frogs, harmonious colours and dreamy reflections. Within a few days, the frogs had gone, and the maturing eggs had risen to the surface. [Manuel Plaickner/Wildlife Photographer of the Year]

© Daniel Kronauer - Wildlife Photographer of the Year — At dusk, Daniel Kronauer tracked the colony of nomadic army ants as it moved, travelling up to 400 metres (a quarter of a mile) through the rainforest near La Selva Biological Station, northeastern Costa Rica. While it was still dark, the ants would use their bodies to build a new daytime nest (bivouac) to house the queen and larvae. They would form a scaffold of vertical chains (see top right) by interlocking claws on their feet and then create a network of chambers and tunnels into which the larvae and queen would be moved from the last bivouac. At dawn, the colony would send out raiding parties to gather food, mostly other ant species. After 17 days on the move, the colony would then find shelter - a hollow tree trunk, for example - and stay put while the queen laid more eggs, resuming wandering after three weeks. The shape of their temporary bivouacs would depend on the surroundings - most were cone or curtain shaped and partly occluded by vegetation. But one night, the colony assembled in the open, against a fallen branch and two large leaves that were evenly spaced and of similar height, prompting a structure spanning 50 centimetres (20 inches) and resembling 'a living cathedral with three naves'. Kronauer very gently positioned his camera on the forest floor within centimetres of the nest, using a wide angle to take in its environment, but wary of upsetting a few hundred thousand army ants. 'You mustn't breathe in their direction or touch anything connected to the bivouac,' he says. The result was a perfect illustration of the concept of an insect society as a superorganism. [Daniel Kronauer/Wildlife Photographer of the Year]

© David Doubilet - Wildlife Photographer of the Year — The colony of garden eels was one of the largest David Doubilet had ever seen, at least two-thirds the size of a football field, stretching down a steep sandy slope off Dauin, in the Philippines - a cornerstone of the famous Coral Triangle. He rolled off the boat in the shallows and descended along the colony edge, deciding where to set up his kit. He had long awaited this chance, sketching out an ideal portrait of the colony back in his studio and designing an underwater remote system to realise his ambition. It was also a return to a much-loved subject - his first story of very many stories in National Geographic was also on garden eels. These warm-water relatives of conger eels are extremely shy, vanishing into their sandy burrows the moment they sense anything unfamiliar. Doubilet placed his camera housing (mounted on a base plate, with a ball head) just within the colony and hid behind the remnants of a shipwreck. From there he could trigger the system remotely via a 12-metre (40-foot) extension cord. It was several hours before the eels dared to rise again to feed on the plankton that drifted by in the current. He gradually perfected the set-up, each time leaving an object where the camera had been so as not to surprise the eels when it reappeared. Several days later - now familiar with the eels' rhythms and the path of the light - he began to get images he liked. When a small wrasse led a slender cornetfish through the gently swaying forms, he had his shot. [David Doubilet/Wildlife Photographer of the Year]