Winners of the Close up Photographer of the Year 2021 announced

A collage image of dead insects found inside a light fixture has won the title of Close up Photographer of the Year 2021. The image was taken by Norwegian photographer and dentist, Pål Hermansen after finding the insects inside a defective lamp on the side of his house.

“I emptied the lamp and spread the contents onto a large light-table I had left over from my slide days,’ explains Pål. ‘I wanted to express the chaos and diversity of this discovery, but also to find some kind of composition. To me, it’s a visual reminder of the important and extreme diversity of animals around us that we take for granted.”

Now in its third year, the competition had over 9000 entries across nine categories, including Animals, Insects, Plants & Fungi, Intimate Landscape, Underwater, Butterflies & Insects, Manmade, Micro (for images created using a microscope) and Young Close-up Photographer of the Year (for entrants aged 17 or under.)

The winner of the Young Close-up Photographer of the Year was awarded to 16 year old Ezra Boulton for his intimate portrait of a rat peering out of an abandoned car wheel close to his home. ‘It was framed so pleasingly by the concentric circles of the tyre that I came back the next morning with my camera in the hope of capturing the moment,’ he explains. ‘I like how the rat’s beady eyes echo the holes in the tyre.’

‘The standard was incredible. Yet again, entrants have shown that close-up photography can help us see the world anew and discover beauty in subjects that are often overlooked.’

– Tracy Calder, Co-founder of CUPOTY   

The top 100 images from the competition can be viewed on the website. Below are the top 2 images from each category.

Lead image credits: © Pål Hermansen | cupoty.com Insects and Overall Winner of Close-up Photographer of the Year 03

Insects:

Animals:

Plants and Fungi:

Underwater:

Butterflies and Dragonflies:

Intimate Landscape:

Manmade:

Micro:

Young:

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