The winners of this 12 months’s Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year have been unveiled, and the General Winner of the competitors was DPGer Scott Portelli with an beautiful photograph of a backlit leafy seadragon hiding amongst kelp off Second Valley in South Australia. The competition, which is organized by the South Australian Museum, attracted greater than 2,200 photographs by photographers from across the nation.
“The nationwide lockdown was declared and we have been caught for six weeks at a small campground within the Fleurieu Peninsula. This ended up being a blessing in disguise,” stated Portelli. “Over the course of the six weeks I had the chance to dive usually, turning into acquainted with the terrain, attending to know the dive web site and recognizing a couple of particular person seadragons. I grew to become acquainted with the resident dragons of Second Valley and that is how I managed to get the shot.”
Leafies mix in with the thick kelp to keep away from predators, so backlighting was used to intensify this particular person’s options and make its delicate physique seem translucent. Scott used an all-Olympus setup to seize his entry within the competitors’s “Animal Portrait” class: OM-D EM-1 Mark II, 60mm f/2.8 macro lens, and UFL-3 strobes. The picture was underexposed to focus on particulars within the appendages.
There have been different glorious underwater photographs among the many finalists and winners, together with Justin Gilligan’s runner-up within the “Our Affect” class, a Columbus crab discovering shelter in a plastic bag of face masks from a cargo ship that misplaced dozens of containers in tough seas off Sydney; and Ashlee Karas’s “Panorama” runner-up, which is definitely a shocking over-under capturing the pristine coral gardens of the Ningaloo Reef below a fiery sundown.
Try the complete gallery of winners here.
