The South Australian Museum has unveiled the shortlist for the 2026 Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year competition, now in its 23rd year. The competition attracted 2,129 entries from 501 photographers representing 17 countries, with submissions covering the ANZANG bioregion – Australia, New Zealand, Antarctica and New Guinea.
Animal Behaviour Highlights
Rachelle Mackintosh captured 'Rock and a Hard Place', depicting two cranky female southern elephant seals telling a young pup that the milk bar was closed permanently. The image highlights the brief early spring window when adults nurse their pups for just three weeks before returning to sea.
Georgina Steytler's 'Strutting Tern' showcases the quirky courtship ritual of sooty terns, where birds cock their heads, drop their wings and goose-step around each other in unison, flicking sand with their feet.
Threatened Species and Conservation
Kendra Campbell's 'One in 1,000' shows a hatching sea turtle nest at sunset, noting that only one in 1,000 hatchlings may survive to return to the same beach decades later. Matt Cornish's 'Resilience – A Fight for Survival' depicts a Tasmanian devil ravaged by devil facial tumour disease, slowly consuming a wombat corpse during a freezing winter.
Douglas Gimesy's 'Koalas Are Dying for You to Slow Down' highlights road trauma as a major threat to koala populations, causing death or injuries like fractured jaws, limbs and spines, especially between dusk and dawn.
Landscape and Botanical Wonders
Gergo Rugli's 'Nereus' captures a perfectly formed wave breaking over a reef after a 10 to 15-foot swell, with a narrow break in clouds illuminated at sunrise. Simone Osborne's 'Contour Lines' shows frost-covered snow gums tracing natural contours after bushfire, revealing hidden patterns of recovering forest.
Benjamin Alldridge's 'Alchemy' features tanglefoot, Australia's only cold-weather deciduous species, glowing in gold tones through bio-fluorescence under UV light, with subtle aurora and airglow. William Patino's 'Ancient arms' depicts silver beech trees extending horizontally from mountainsides over calm lake waters.
Macro and Monochrome Categories
Dianne Galbraith's 'A Spider’s Journey' shows a minute spider negotiating a forest of dandelion seeds in silhouette. François Brassard's 'Surrounded by Foes' captures spider ants surrounding and immobilising a pony ant on the rainforest floor, which they will carry to their nest to feed larvae.
Cheng Kang's 'Imprint Beneath Wings' is a drone aerial view of birds drifting over a leaf-like pattern etched into a tailings pond, creating a serene yet tense landscape shaped by industrial forces. Natalie Murray's 'Flight of Fantasy' uses slow-shutter panning to capture motion blur of a bird chasing another in a territorial dispute at a suburban wetland.
Junior and Other Categories
Arlo Wallace's 'The King’s Plumage' explores king penguin plumage as an abstract study on Macquarie Island. Spencer Hitchen's 'I Love Glossies' documents glossy black cockatoo behaviour at a local waterhole, with a female giving a close-up fly-by.
Emma Perry's 'Bin Turkey' shows an opportunistic brush turkey foraging through a rubbish bin in Queensland. Mat Bell's 'Penguin Pose' captures an Adélie penguin in an almost levitational state as it propels from water onto an iceberg in Antarctic waters. Donald Chin's 'Feathered Refuge' shows a juvenile tawny frogmouth stretching its wings, momentarily cloaking its siblings in a tender moment.
