Our original category, the winning image will be featured on the cover of the 2025 Summer Edition of Crikey! Magazine. Photographs submitted to this category had to be portrait orientated and feature an animal, photographed anywhere in the world.

Crikey! Magazine Cover – Winning Image:

Winner: Santiago Arias

‘A Great Comeback’

Porá, this beautiful and endangered jaguar, is part of a rewilding project in Argentina. He, as many other jaguars reintroduced to the Argentine Chaco, help to educate locals and repopulate a once very plentiful area of their territory. Rewilding focuses on restoring ecological balance to systems degraded by human impact.

Location: El Impenetrable National Park, Chaco, Argentina
Camera/Lens: Nikon Z6ii, 70-200mm F2.8 lens

Highly Commended: Jeremiah Winden

‘Imbabura Frog‘
Trekking in the lowland forests of Ecuador with my camera, while going down a muddy slope to a small stream crossing, I came across an Imbabura tree frog (Boana picturata). With hypnotic eyes, brilliant colors and being perfectly perched in the middle of this lush jungle leaf, this frog is the most beautiful I have ever seen.

Location: Ecuador, South America
Camera/Lens: Canon R5, RF 100mm f/2.8 macro lens

Finalist: Jake Wilton

‘Forest Gardener‘

A Southern Cassowary forages for fruits in the Daintree Rainforest. After spotting the cassowary upstream, I positioned myself on a rocky bank and waited as it slowly approached, plucking fruits from the creek along the way. As a keystone species it is an essential seed disperser for the rainforest.

Location: Daintree National Park, Australia
Camera/Lens: Nikon Z8, 70-200mm f/2.8 s

Finalist: Andrew Raguse

‘Frog On Top‘

Costa Rica’s rainforests are famous for their amazing diversity of frogs and other amphibians. To capture a sharp photograph of this spectacular frog in the dark undergrowth without any artificial lighting, 12 images were skillfully stacked together.

Location: Costa Rica, Central America
Camera/Lens: Canon EOS R5, 180mm f3.5L macro lens. Mounted on a tripod, with a cable release

Finalist: John Peters

‘Side-Eye‘
This might seem like a regular-sized mantis, but this is actually a mantis nymph, a juvenile, with his head spanning only 3 millimeters! With the naked eye, it’s hard to see many details of insects this small, but thanks to high magnification lenses and focus-stacking, much can be revealed.

Location: Toowoomba, Australia
Camera/Lens: Canon 90D, 100mm f/2.8L macro lens. Raynox DCR 250 (achieving 2:1 magnification). Godox V1 Flash and Beetle Diffuser Pro