World Nature Photography Awards

Paddling orangutans, snoozing macaques and a seal hunting its lunch were among the winning shots. See the best of them here, with the overall winner at the end...

The World Nature Photography Awards were founded in the belief that photography can influence people to see the world from a different perspective and change their own habits for the good of the planet. “Seeing these images cannot fail to motivate one to do everything to protect this fragile planet of ours,” said Adrian Dinsdale, co-founder of the awards.

Winner: Animals in their habitat. An orangutan wading in Borneo. Credit: Thomas Vijayan.

Winner: Animal Portraits. Long-tailed macaques dozing in Bali. Credit: Tom Vierus

Winner: Black and White. An arctic fox walking through a snow storm in Iceland. Credit: Vince Burton

Winner: Behaviour, amphibians and reptiles. Pacific tree frog pictured in a city park in Canada. Credit: Shayne Kay

Winner: People and nature. An ice cave in Lake Baikal, Russia. Credit: Sabrina Inderbitzi

Winner: Urban wildlife. Humpback whale pictured off the coast of New York. Credit: Matthijs Noome

Spare a thought for the penguin that featured in the grand prize winning shot of this year’s World Nature Photography Awards – the unfortunate creature was about to become a leopard seal’s lunch. Such is the cruelness of nature.

The dramatic scene (pictured below) was captured by photographer Amos Nachoum from the US. He waited patiently in frigid conditions on the remote island of Plano – off the Antarctic Peninsula – for the precise moment at low tide, when the seals stealthily enter a lagoon and search for their prey.

The winning shot: a leopard seal hunting its lunch in Antarctic. Image: Amos Nachoum