Australian photographer Ross Gudgeon has won the overall prize at Close-up Photographer of the Year 7 for his image of inside a cauliflower soft coral in Lembeh Strait, Indonesia.
Gudgeon got the shot using a Nauticam EMWL probe lens threaded through the coral.
Regarding his photo, Gudgeon said:
“Named for its cauliflower-like form, this soft coral is made up of countless small, rounded polyps that give it a puffy texture. By carefully threading a probe lens through the coral’s branches without disturbing them, I was able to photograph the subject from the inside out, offering a different view of a familiar marine organism.”
Close-up Photographer of the Year is an international photography competition (based in the UK) dedicated to revealing the hidden wonder of the world through macro, micro and close-up imagery. The seventh edition attracted over 12,000 entries from 63 countries.
A jury of 22 expert photographers, naturalists and editors spent more than 20 hours on Zoom calls to select the winners and Top 100 images.
This year’s winning images span 11 categories, with subjects ranging from frog spawn resembling a galaxy and a ghost-like swarm of mayflies approaching a Hungarian town, to an ice-covered tree in Nagano and a fantastical landscape created by oxidising a copper plate with household materials.
CUPOTY co-founder Tracy Calder said:
“This was the toughest competition yet. The winning image embodies everything close-up photography can achieve – it shows us a perspective we’ve never seen before and reveals hidden beauty in a familiar subject. The judges were captivated.”
Check out all the winners at cupoty.com.
(Featured Image credit: © Ross Gudgeon/CUPOTY)
