The winners of the annual Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards have been revealed, celebrating the year’s best and most hilarious wildlife shots.
The contest organizers unveiled the finalists last month, and Jason Moore’s excellent capture of a kangaroo appearing to play air guitar earned this year’s top prize. For his efforts, Moore takes home a once-in-a-lifetime safari adventure in the Masai Mara, Kenya, and a unique handmade trophy from the Wonder Workshop in Tanzania. Moore has also received new gear from Think Tank.
Moore shot the winning photo in the outer suburbs of Perth, Australia, when photographing more traditional wildlife portraits of the many adult kangaroos and Joeys enjoying a beautiful day in the field.
“I had been out with my camera photographing some waterfowl at a nearby lake. I had been up at sunrise to take advantage of the ‘golden hour’ light, but it turned out to be a disappointing morning on the water. After leaving the lake, somewhat dejected, I decided to swing past an area of open bushland that I know of, because there is often a ‘mob’ of kangaroos feeding and sunning themselves in a field close to the road (it’s on my way to and from work so I drive past it every day).”
When he arrived, the morning light was still “favorable,” so Moore stopped, grabbed his gear, and found an excellent spot to photograph the kangaroos from eye level. “I ended up shooting about 40 or 50 frames of the kangaroos with various content including mums, joeys, and also some action shots of them bouncing along through the yellow field,” says Moore. He also says he had to contend with biting ticks in the field, adding, “The lengths we go to just to get that perfect image.”
“The shoot turned out to be a great session, and I am quite fond of several images that I captured. Not many people know that kangaroos are normally fairly docile and even a bit boring most of the time, if I’m honest. However, when I saw this ‘roo striking the air guitar pose, it immediately brought a smile to my face, and I knew that I had captured something really special.”
Alongside Moore’s overall winning image, which also topped the contest’s “Creatures of the Land” category, winners were named across six categories. Alongside the winners selected by the judging panel, the contest also features the Affinity Photo People’s Choice Award, which was won this year by the Youth category winner Jacek Stankiewicz. This marks the first time the people’s choice was a youth entry.
Category Winners
Creatures of the Air
Underwater
Portfolio Award
Junior Award and Affinity Photo People’s Choice
Judges also selected 10 highly commended entries that, while they didn’t win their respective categories, are each fantastic and humorous wildlife photos.
Highly Commended
“One of the greatest pleasures we experience in this competition is seeing the incredible standard of photography, combined with humor, which consistently increases each year. This year’s People’s Choice Award winner is like the cherry on the cake. To have a junior entrant win this major prize is extremely rewarding for us. We want more juniors to enter, we want to take our conservation message and our love of photography to the younger generation and this result proves that young photographers have as much chance of winning as anybody else. The unique combination of humor and photography allows for a much broader range of winners, and we are so thrilled to award the PCA title to Jacek this year,” says Tom Sullam, competition co-founder.
This year saw 5,300 entries from 1,842 photographers in 85 different countries. Next year’s competition will surely be another great one. Photographers can learn more about entering future editions and browse previous winning photos on the competition’s website.
Image credits: Photos provided courtesy of the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards. Individual photographers are credited in the image captions.