Seeing animals in the wild is always a transcendent experience, but the winning photos and videos for the California Academy of Sciences’ 13th annual BigPicture: Natural World Photography Competition capture nature in ways you’ve never seen before. Submissions came from over 64 countries, but the singular image that stole everyone’s hearts is a polar bear peeking through a hole in the ice.
1. ‘A Seal’s Last Sight’ by Audun Rikardsen
“This is the most incredible perspective of a polar bear that I’ve ever seen—down to the way the ice, water, and bubbles frame the bear’s face,” Suzi Eszterhas, BigPicture jury chair, said in a press release.
To get this amazing viewpoint, photographer Audun Rikardsen traveled to the drift ice north of the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. Capturing the image took more than three years of planning and multiple attempts.
First, Rikardsen had to locate a seal’s breathing hole. The photographer rigged a motion-sensing underwater camera directly beneath the breathing hole and waited eight hours in the cold. It paid off when a polar bear pushed his head through the thin layer of ice covering the hole, allowing the photographer to snap this one-in-a-million shot. He then had to wait nine more hours while the bear napped before he could safely return to the shoot location and retrieve his camera!
2. ‘Hangnail’ by Kat Zhou
Kat Zhou captures this mid-air tiff between unlikely avian combatants in San Diego, California.
3. ‘The Swarm’ by Patricio Caro
Patricio Caro snapped this photo of a school of fish mimicking a larger fish to outmaneuver undersea predators in Playa del Carmen, Mexico.
4. ‘Evolution’ by Petr Bambousek
Petr Bambousek found this Malayan sun bear deep into a dumpster dive in Kaeng Krachan National Park, Thailand.
5. ‘Egg Clutch’ by Anton Sorokin
Anton Sorokin captures a female California newt anchoring herself underwater in a murky pond in Contra Costa County. This newt is mid-spawn while grasping another female’s previously laid egg clutch. This photo won the Aquatic Life category.
6. ‘The Leap’ by Marco Gaiotti
Italy’s Marco Gaiotti captured this striking image in Ethiopia’s Simien Mountains National Park. The animal is a primate called a gelada, which uses the area’s high ground to protect itself from predators.
7. ‘Red and Blue’ by Francesco Visintin
Francesco Visintin snapped a photo of one amphibian giving another a piggyback ride in Parco Nazionale Foreste Casentinesi, Italy.
8. ‘Bounced Out / Into Care’ by Douglas Gimesy
Douglas Gimesy captured this shot of a “joey” kangaroo getting medical treatment at Bunurong Wildlife Care in Inverloch, Australia.
9. ‘Born of Silence’ by Philipp Egger
This personality-filled shot features two Eurasian eagle owl siblings in Venosta Valley, South Tyrol, Italy. Philipp Egger snapped this photo just inside their parents’ nesting ledge, winning him the Winged Life category.
10. ‘Humpback Whale in Polar Night’ by Audun Rikardsen
Audun Rikardsen gives us two perspectives in a single shot. Whales glide just beneath the surface while, above the water, a fishing vessel is under constant siege from feathered scavengers looking for an easy meal in the Fjord of Kvænangen, Troms County, Norway.
11. ‘New Hope: Rhino IVF’ by Ami Vitale
That’s an embryo of a northern white rhino. Ami Vitale captured this stunning image at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya before the embryo was transferred to a surrogate mother.
12. ‘Angel of Death’ by Andy Parkinson
British photographer Andy Parkinson caught this ominous shot within the Pantanal wetlands of Brazil. It shows a black vulture perched atop the floating carcass of a caiman.
13. ‘Ghost of the Gladiolus’ by Loughran Cabe
Loughran Cabe captured this shot in his family’s home garden in Rockbridge County, Virginia. You can see a Carolina sphinx moth in mid-feed on one of his flowers.
14. ‘Breaking the Circle’ by Aaron Gekoski
Aaron Gekoski snapped this adorable photo just before a ground pangolin underwent a CT scan in Hoedspruit, South Africa.
15. ‘Orphan of the Road’ by Fernando Faciole
In Brazil, new highways have forced wildlife and modern life into the same space. These roadways have cut the nation’s anteater population in half due to collisions. Fernando Faciole took this photo in Belo Horizonte, framing the giant anteater as the face of Brazil’s first federal highway mitigation plan, with the goal of reducing these incidents.
16. ‘Pandas Gone Wild’ by Ami Vitale
How long would you be willing to hang out in a panda-urine-soaked costume? Within the Wolong Hetaoping Panda Center in Sichuan Province, China, the golden rule is no human contact, so everyone has to blend in. Ami Vitale went above and beyond to see these pandas in their natural habitat. For more, check out the video below.
