1st Place/Grand Prize: Photograph by Jayaprakash Joghee Bojan, 2017 National Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year. A male orangutan peers from behind a tree while crossing a river in Borneo, Indonesia.

An image of an orangutan crossing a river in Indonesia has won the grand prize in the National Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year contest 2017.

Singaporean photographer Jayaprakash Joghee Bojan captured the image when he was about five feet deep in water in the Sekoyner River in Tanjung Puting National Park in Borneo, Indonesia, which is supposedly home to freshwater crocodiles.

The photograph was selected from over 11,000 entries, winning Bojan a $10,000 USD prize and publication of the image in an upcoming issue of National Geographic magazine.

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He said, “Honestly, sometimes you just go blind when things like this happen. You’re so caught up. You really don’t know what’s happening.

“You don’t feel the pain, you don’t feel the mosquito bites, you don’t feel the cold, because your mind is completely lost in what’s happening in front of you.”

Todd Kennedy of New South Wales, Australia won first place in the Aerials category with his photo of a rock pool in Sydney at high tide.

Aerials 1st Place. Photograph by Todd Kennedy, 2017 National Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year. In Sydney, Australia, the Pacific Ocean at high tide breaks over a natural rock pool enlarged in the 1930s. Avoiding the crowds at the city’s many beaches, a local swims laps.

Other winners included Jim Obester of Vancouver, Wash., who won first place in the Underwater category for a photo of an anemone and Karim Iliya of Haiku, Hawaii, who won first place in the Landscapes category for a photo from Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park.

Other winning images and more details about the competition can be found on the National Geographic website.


Underwater 1st Place. Photograph by Jim Obester, 2017 National Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year. Blue-filtered strobe lights stimulate fluorescent pigments in the clear tentacles of a tube-dwelling anemone in Hood Canal, Washington.


Landscapes 1st Place. Photograph by Karim Iliya, 2017 National Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year. Shortly before twilight in Kalapana, Hawai’i, a fragment of the cooled lava tube broke away, leaving the molten rock to fan in a fiery spray for less than half an hour before returning to a steady flow.


Wildlife 2nd Place. Photograph by Alejandro Prieto, 2017 National Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year. An adult Caribbean pink flamingo feeds a chick in Yucatán, Mexico. Both parents alternate feeding chicks, at first with a liquid baby food called crop milk, and then with regurgitated food.


Aerials 2nd Place. Photograph by Takahiro Bessho, 2017 National Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year. Snow-covered metasequoia trees, also called dawn redwoods, interlace over a road in Takashima, Japan.


Underwater 2nd Place. Photograph by Shane Gross, 2017 National Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year. Typically a shy species, a Caribbean reef shark investigates a remote-triggered camera in Cuba’s Gardens of the Queen marine protected area.


Landscapes 2nd Place. Photograph by Yuhan Liao, 2017 National Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year. Sunlight glances off mineral strata of different colours in Dushanzi Grand Canyon, China.


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