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His quirky photos of coral, a swarm of mayflies and a hungry spider earned him the Close-up Photographer of the Year award.
According to a press release, the seventh annual award received more than 12,000 entries from 63 countries, which were judged by photographers, naturalists and editors.
Entries are divided into 11 categories, including animals, insects, butterflies and dragonflies, arachnids, invertebrate portraits, underwater, plants, fungi, and slime molds.
The overall winner was Ross Gudgeon’s underwater photo of cauliflower soft corals in Indonesia’s Lembeh Strait, “Fractal Forest,” for which the Australian photographer took home the top prize of £2,500 ($3,420).
Gudgeon said the coral was named for its “many small, round, knob-like polyps that give it a bulging texture.” He said he carefully passed an extended macro wide-angle lens through the coral branches and photographed the coral species from the inside out.
This strait is a diving and biodiversity hotspot that separates the small Lembeh Island from North Sulawesi province. It’s a popular location among underwater macro photographers looking for strange and wonderful creatures, yet it’s located near a large modern harbour.
Some photographs contrasted the natural world with human influence.
The winning photo in the insect category was titled “Blue Army” and captured the complex environmental landscape of the Hungarian town of Szentendre.
“After decades, the spectacular and endangered Danube mayfly, which disappeared from the rivers of Central Europe due to water pollution, has returned to the Danube River, possibly due to deteriorating water quality,” photographer Imre Pocho said in the caption of his entry.
The photo was taken from inside the river in the summer of 2024, and Pocho said people along the river were “overwhelmed” by “millions” of mayflies during a period of hot, dry weather.
“The light attracts the mayflies,” Pocho explained. “Thick clouds of mayflies engulfed restaurants, market stalls, wine bars and concerts during the festival in late August, making it an alarming sight not to be missed.
“The mayfly had been circling around the light for a long time, but it couldn’t get out of there and unfortunately it died on the asphalt.
Elsewhere, Pedro Luna captured and photographed the box moth, an invasive species native to Asia, in Catalonia, Spain. The Cuban tree frog, photographed by Young Photographer finalist Jameson Hawkins-Kimmel in his Florida backyard, is also considered an invasive species in the state.
But most photographers kept their focus firmly on their subjects, both small and large.
“This was our toughest contest yet,” Tracy Calder, co-founder of the contest, said in a press release.
Of Gudgeon’s winning image, she said: “It embodies everything that close-up photography can achieve. It shows a perspective never seen before and reveals hidden beauty in a familiar subject. The judges were captivated.”
