Photographer Anup Shah (United Kingdom) won the final with this photo capturing the moment a female gorilla walks leisurely through the grass where butterflies are sitting in the special forest reserve Dzanga Sangha , Central African Republic.
After a one-year hiatus due to the Covid-19 pandemic , the Nature Conservancy’s Global Photo Contest has reopened this year, attracting more than 100,000 entries from around the world.
The overall winning photo of Anup Shah (United Kingdom) was highly appreciated by the competition judges. The expression on the female gorilla’s face was serene, relaxed, as if enjoying the feeling of joy on a sunny day, when hundreds of butterflies fluttered around her.
In fact, the number of gorillas in Central Africa is declining very quickly due to climate change and human impact on their natural habitat.
People’s Choice Award: Photo of Fireflies by photographer Prathamesh Ghadekar, India.
Right before the arrival of the monsoons, fireflies are often abundant in certain parts of India.
They are present everywhere, mainly in large tree trunks. This particular photo was created by Prathamesh Ghadekar using Adobe Photoshop and created from 32 different images.
The first place in the Landscape category is Daniel De Granville Manço, from Brazil with a photo of a dead cayman crocodile on a vacant lot in the Pantanal forest area, right next to the Transpantaneira highway, Poconé city (Brazil). . The photo was taken by drone on October 4, 2020, at the height of the drought that hit the Pantanal that year.
In the People and Nature photography category, Belgian photographer Alain Schroeder makes viewers reflect on the survival of orangutans in Indonesia. The photo shows a group of lifeguards preparing to operate on a female orangutan estimated to be about three months old.
Despite conservation efforts, this animal is threatened by the rapid shrinking of tropical forests due to deforestation for palm oil plantations, logging, mining, and hunting.
Sebnem Coskun from Turkey won the third prize in the People and Nature photo category with this topical photo: “Covid-19 waste”. The pandemic isn’t over yet, alongside concerns about human health is a new danger to aquatic life. According to a report by the World Wildlife Fund, about 33,880 plastic waste is being pushed into the Mediterranean Sea every minute, most of which washes up on the shores of Italy and Turkey.
The winner of the Water category is Kazi Arifujjaman, from Bangledesh, which evokes complex emotions.
In the Water category, photographer Vu Manh Cuong won the Honorable Mention Award for this aerial shot of a woman rowing a boat in the middle of a lotus pond. The young green lotus leaves in the growing season evoke a feeling of peace and tranquility.
Photo by photographer Vu Manh Cuong
Buddhismlini de Soyza (Australia) won the first prize in the Wildlife category for “Hard Swim” by Buddhismlini de Soyza (Australia). The cheetahs are trying to cross the river with strong currents. The mission seemed to fail, but the leopards made it to shore safely.
According to Buddhismlini de Soyza, his photo aims to show the human impact on nature that is happening all over the world. These effects force many animals to adapt to survive in extreme environments, and not all of them survive
