Mangrove Photography Awards 2025: Twenty Windows onto a Living Planet

A huge reptile slips through tea-coloured water, its jaws opening like a cathedral door on hinges and its eyes as cold as marbles. Just behind it, a heron takes flight through fractured light. That is the energy running through this year’s global shortlist: twenty images in which the wild seems to return your gaze.

The photograph appeared on my laptop as a challenge: ridged armour, strands of algae, reflections sewn across the water, and a patch of space where your instincts anticipate safety but find teeth instead. My little kitchen suddenly seemed humid, as though mangrove air had passed through the display and settled on the table.

As I enlarged it, the details emerged: droplets of water becoming tiny stars, silt filmed across the animal’s forehead. A motorbike droned somewhere in the distance, while the radiators nearby made their autumnal ticking sound. None of it mattered to the crocodile. It looked out with the stare of a survivor and occupied the entire frame. I caught my breath and did not let it go.

Some photographs do more than reveal a location - they alter the space around you.

One question surfaced and refused to fade: what else did the photographer witness, and at what point would close have become too close? There is an odd reassurance in never knowing.

Where a gigantic crocodile commands the light

Its scale delivers the first jolt. A gigantic crocodile moves through the water, all muscle and low angles, with mangrove roots forming a gridded backdrop that resembles a slow pulse. The light is thin and milky, the kind found only before the heat arrives, transforming every droplet into a muted lantern. You can sense the camera held low. You can sense the patience behind the shutter release.

There is a story you can almost taste. Imagine a photographer standing in brackish shallows at sunrise, mist beading on the lens hood as a guide recites tide times from memory. Rangers in the delta say that some saltwater crocodiles exceed five metres, leaving tracks that resemble tyre marks. During that brief period before the wind disrupts the surface, the water turns satin-smooth, and the crocodile cleaves it like a slow-moving comet.

What makes the image so gripping? Its composition unsettles your sense of ease: the animal is not placed centrally but advances into the frame, head turned and eyes level with your own gaze. The depth of field is tight enough to quieten the surroundings, yet broad enough for the mangrove roots to suggest their setting. Ethics are woven into the shot as well - the sharpness of the heat haze and the reflections’ angle imply a distance, hinting that a long lens kept the stress levels low for both photographer and animal.

How wildlife is photographed without damaging it

The approach begins long before the shutter is pressed. Read tidal charts as carefully as a kitchen calendar, then match them with sunrise times; calm water and low sun provide the texture you need. Take a dry bag, two microfibre cloths and a long lens that you can handhold if necessary. Consider the wind too - even a light headwind carries your scent towards the subject, so work across the breeze whenever possible. Move like a thought rather than a splash.

We have all experienced the moment when a rare bird finally lands and we frantically turn every setting into a muddle. Pause and breathe. Set your exposure in advance for the background rather than the subject; allow the animal to enter the light you have already prepared. Practise panning with ripples, not only with birds. Stay low, and keep your feet quiet. Honestly, no one manages that every day. It is all right to be out of practice. It is all right to miss the shot.

What are the usual pitfalls? Pursuing rather than waiting; choosing a wide view when a tighter crop would tell the more honest story; overlooking the fact that silence and empty space are part of the story too. Build ethics into your camera settings - maintain distance, show respect, avoid bait and cause no stress. Mangrove Photography Awards 2025 is not only about spectacle; it demonstrates that patience is more powerful than intrusion. All 20 images express the same lesson, each in its own way.

“Wait long enough and the tide brings the frame to you. The trick is having the courage not to force it.”

• Check the tides and light the evening before, then go to sleep with charged batteries.
• Keep one memory card empty, one lens clean and one plan that you are willing to abandon.
• Draw on local knowledge; it saves time and helps to keep you safe.
• Leave no trace - footprints disappear, stress does not.
• Review images on location only to check focus, not to satisfy your ego.

Twenty windows onto one living planet

Away from the crocodile, the shortlist travels widely. A fruit bat weaving through dusk above Kenyan creeks. A child in a coastal village planting a sapling knee-deep in grey water. Bioluminescence fizzing in the image like scattered stars, while elsewhere rain pounds a tin roof as a mudskipper flexes on its wet stage. Each frame carries you to a place where roots quietly hold the soil together, day after day.

These images are connected by an ache: a feeling that nature is both resilient and fragile, noisy and reserved. Here, a crab carries a cigarette butt like a dead leaf; there, a scarred ranger’s hand gently cradles a hatchling as delicate as china. They are not fairy tales. They are field notes with pulses. At the centre of it all, the crocodile seems to smile faintly, and you understand that the river predates our impatience.