Winners announced in 2022 BirdLife Australia Photography Awards

‘In the footsteps of Pretender’ by Elmar Akhmetov, the winner of the Portfolio Award. © Elmar Akhmetov.

This year’s winning portfolio is a series of images of a single lyrebird, taken over the course of three months while the photographer was working on a short film on lyrebirds. According to the photographer, the shots were selected to ‘try and condense my experience of observation into a short form to give the viewers an idea of the behaviour of the bird outside of endless hours of feeding’. Elmar will receive a $5,000 cash prize, thanks to the competition’s principal sponsor, Nikon Australia.

Individual category winners from top left: Backyard Birds – ‘Leaning in’ by Rebecca Harrison, Bird Behaviour – ‘Feed Me Please’ by Cheng Kang, Bird Portrait – ‘Hokey Pokey’ by Danny Lee, Birds in Flight – ‘White Faced Storm Petrel’ by John Harrison; bottom row: Human Impact – ‘Over the Rainbow’ by Nathan Watson,  Special theme: Australasian Robins – ‘Yellow’ by Glenn Faithfull, Youth – ‘Morning Serenity’ by Desmond Wang and Birds in the Landscape – ‘The Sentinel’ by Maria Coleman.

Each winner of a category award will receive $1,000 for their winning entries, thanks to Nikon Australia and Lake Cowal Foundation.

The three winners of the Peter Slater Memorial Prize for a monochrome photo are (from left):’Hiding Wren’ by Mitchell Roberts, ‘Carpark Curlews’ by Jane McMenamin and ‘NipNip’ by Austin Ridley-Jarvis (youth entrant).

The Peter Slater Memorial Prize commemorates the life of renowned Australian artist, Peter Slater. Raoul Slater, the instigator and judge of this award, has donated one of his father’s drawings to each winner as the prize for this category.

The BirdLife Australia Photography Awards will be back in May 2023 with a new special theme, which will be announced closer to when entries are declared open. Click here for more information and to view the runners-up and prize winners in the 2022 competitions.