Beautiful and trippy orangutan photo wins World Nature Photography Awards

The World Nature Photography Awards (WNPA) have announced the winning photos of its annual contest. It’s all about the natural world around us, so it’s a truly incredible selection of photos of plants, animals, fungi and landscapes from all over the world.

Like every year, the contest received entries from all corners of the globe, more precisely: from 20 countries across six continents. But there can only be one overall winner, and this year, it’s Thomas Vijayan from Canada. His beautiful image of the endangered Bornean orangutan brought him the top award and cash prize of $1,000.

Thomas says that he spent hours up a tree, waiting to see if one of the local orangutans would use it to cross over to a nearby island. And it did! So he used the opportunity to capture a unique image of the beautiful animal, and his patience was well worth the wait. Other than the overall prize, this photo also made Thomas the winner of the Animals in their habitat contest category.

Speaking of categories, there are 13 of them:

1. Animal Portraits
2. Animals in their habitat
3. Behaviour amphibians and reptiles
4. Behaviour birds
5. Behaviour Invertebrates
6. Behaviour Mammals
7. Black and white
8. Nature art
9. Nature photojournalism
10. People and nature
11. Planet Earth’s landscape and environments
12. Plants and fungi
13. Urban wildlife

The World Nature Photography Awards were founded on the belief that we can all make small efforts to shape the future of our planet in a positive way. Its founders also believe that photography can influence people to see the world from a different perspective and change their own habits for the good of the planet.

You can take a look at all category winners below. And if you’d like to see one of your photos in the selection, go ahead and submit your entries for this year’s contest on WNPA’s website.

Animal Portraits

Animals in their habitat

Behaviour amphibians and reptiles

Behaviour birds

Behaviour Invertebrates

Behaviour Mammals

Black and white

Nature art

Nature photojournalism

People and nature

Planet Earth’s landscape and environments

Plants and fungi

Urban wildlife