Alex Baker is a portrait and lifestyle driven photographer based in Valencia, Spain. She works on a range of projects from commercial to fine art and has had work featured in publications such as The Daily Mail, Conde Nast Traveller and El Mundo, and has exhibited work across Europe
At first glance, Jaime Rojo’s photograph looks like an image of a dense forest, albeit one shot in exquisite light. But look closer, and you’ll notice that the trees are covered in millions of monarch butterflies. Rojo’s “Forest of the Monarchs” was awarded the grand prize for the 2024 BigPicture: Natural World Photography Competition after he spent years studying the insects in Mexico.
This year’s award features some absolutely stunning photographs taken by photographers from over 70 countries around the world. Each submission captures the remarkable beauty and awe-inspiring splendour of the natural world. Here are some of the winning and finalist entries.
Streaked with sunlight and crowded together for warmth in winter, Monarch Butterflies blanket fir trees in El Rosario Sanctuary. I requested special permits to work outside the sanctuary’s operating hours and made this photograph shortly before sunset. Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, Michoacan, Mexico
Photographer Georgina Steytler used a combination of visual techniques to capture the eerie essence of these plants, whose flowering bodies and scents resemble those of their would-be pollinators. Several Caladenia orchid species are what scientists call “sexually deceptive,” producing so-called pseudopheromones that mimic the scent of female wasps. Paired with the orchid’s unique color and shape, these adaptations lure male wasps from afar and inspire them to try to copulate with the flower, covering the wasps with pollen in the process.
Arctic Blue Fox on High Bluffs, St George Island, The Pribilofs, Alaska. Mammals like the Arctic blue fox have adapted over generations to the unique, treeless environment: Below the pictured fox appears to be the entrance of a sprawling maze of tunnels that form an interconnected, underground nest for these secretive mammals. Photographer Kathleen Borshanian says the dens are practically ubiquitous on the Pribilof Islands, winding their way within a few feet of the island’s sheer 1,000-foot-high basaltic cliffs, and they serve as a crucial refuge from predators and a safe haven for rearing the next generation of fox pups.
Photographer Alvaro Herrero says he captured the fatal entanglement of this juvenile humpback whale in order to paint an unflinching image of the life-threatening conditions whales face along their migrations—and also to illustrate the slow, painful death of our planet at the hands of human selfishness and inactivity.
Veteran underwater photographer Shane Gross had heard of the tadpoles’ great migration and spent a summer morning exploring a lake in the northern part of the island, only to learn from a local that the tadpoles tended to surface en masse in the late afternoon. Returning to the lake some hours later, camera in tow, Gross was amazed by the numbers of tadpoles he witnessed dancing in the water, their quick movements revealing little flecks of gold on their otherwise opaque black skin. Using a tilted fish-eye lens, Gross was able to capture both the tadpoles’ rapturous journey to find sustenance and glimpses of the lake’s thicket of lily pads and towering forest-covered mountains.
Following a cluster of fishing vessels off the coast of Scotland’s Shetland Islands, photographer Franco Banfi tracked an active colony of northern gannets and their feeding route, diving into the dark water to visually capture the chaos, beauty, and unexpected harmony of the gannet’s daily fight for food and survival.
Hoopa Valley Tribal member Steven Saiz throws flames from his driptorch during a culutral burn on the Klamath River. Indigenous peoples of California historically tended the land by igniting frequent, low-intensity burns, mimicking natural disturbances caused by lightning. And where fire went, life followed. By clearing fire-prone brush that might otherwise take over, these regular burns encouraged beneficial growth patterns for native plants and fruits, simultaneously maintaining biodiversity and protecting local water supplies. Unfortunately, an era of federally enforced wildfire suppression and forest mismanagement primed Western forests for the kind of severe, mass-scale burns we experience today, thus maligning fire as unequivocally ‘bad’.
Terrestrial Wildlife Winner
Hema Palan – Beauty of the Desert
Even though the Schokari sand racer (Psammophis schokari) is known for its whip-fast speed and agility, photographer Hema Palan managed to capture a tranquil nighttime shot of a lone sand racer moving through the branches of a shrub in India’s Thar Desert. As a diurnal ambush predator, this reptile was likely settling in for a night of rest before emerging in the daylight to hunt lizards, rodents, and other prey. Their pursuits can reach speeds of up to 16 kilometers per hour, earning the sand racer its title as one of the Middle East’s fastest snakes.
Wading in the tidepools off of South Africa’s Cape Peninsula, photographer Geo Cloete’s vision and creative use of a fisheye lens captured the stunning symbiosis between the ocean’s crashing waves and sea anemones: Only when there is a chance of feeding do these colorful cnidarians bloom, extending their nimble tentacles outward to ensnare plankton, crabs, and tiny fish. The vehicle for their prey? The breaking waves themselves, which sweep over tidepools and their inhabitants during high tide, delivering nutrients and other microscopic organisms to the pool’s intricate food web.
Photographer Peter Mather, finding the Arctic’s transient wildlife feels like trying to pin down a ghost or apparition, which ultimately became the theme uniting Mather’s artfully rendered photo story. By placing motion-activated camera traps in the field and often leaving them over the span of months or years, Mather captured five rare visuals of wildlife in the ice-covered expanses of the Arctic, including this caribou (Rangifer tarandus granti) carcass pictured on Alaska’s North Slope. He then used both flash photography and a long exposure to illustrate the fleeting presence of an Arctic fox that seemed to be as curious about the carcass as he was.
Photographer Kazuaki Koseki would, having spent the past seven years studying the ecology and photographing the beautiful parabolic trajectories of these seemingly magical insects in the forests of the Yamagata Prefecture. Fireflies hold particular cultural importance in Japan, where their emergence marks the changing of the seasons and is thought to be a manifestation of the souls of soldiers who died in war. The floating light trails captured in this photo were mostly created by male fireflies, who hover and emit frequent bursts of light when trying to court mates. With smaller back wings that render them flightless, female fireflies of this particular species wait patiently on the forest floor or on trees, signaling to males every few seconds with similar flashes of light. Although Koseki’s use of long exposure helped illustrate the wandering luminescence of hundreds of fireflies, he ultimately viewed these insects as his creative collaborators: “The himebotaru is an artist, who paints light in the forest,” Koseki said.
You can see all the winning images and finalists on the website. These images originally appeared on bioGraphic, an online magazine about nature and regeneration and the official media sponsor for the California Academy of Sciences’ BigPicture Natural World Photography Competition.
Alex Baker is a portrait and lifestyle driven photographer based in Valencia, Spain. She works on a range of projects from commercial to fine art and has had work featured in publications such as The Daily Mail, Conde Nast Traveller and El Mundo, and has exhibited work across Europe
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