Winning Photos Of The 2017 National Geographic Nature Photographer Of The Year Contest

Selected from over 11,000 entries, a wildlife photo of an orangutan crossing a river in Indonesia’s Tanjung Puting National Park has been selected as the grand-prize winner of the 2017 National Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year contest. The photo, titled “Face to face in a river in Borneo,” was captured by Jayaprakash Joghee Bojan of Singapore. He has won $10,000 and will have his winning image published in an upcoming issue of National Geographic magazine and featured on the @NatGeo Instagram account.

A male orangutan peers from behind a tree while crossing a river in Borneo, Indonesia. (Photograph by Jayaprakash Joghee Bojan, National Geographic Your Shot)

Bojan took the winning photo while he was about five feet deep in water after waiting patiently in the Sekoyner River in Tanjung Puting National Park in Borneo, Indonesia.

On capturing the photo, Bojan 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.”

More info: National Geographic Nature Photographer Of The Year, Instagram

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. (Photograph by Todd Kennedy, National Geographic Your Shot)

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. (Photograph by Karim Iliya, National Geographic Your Shot)

Blue-filtered strobe lights stimulate fluorescent pigments in the clear tentacles of a tube-dwelling anemone in Hood Canal, Washington. (Photograph by Jim Obester, National Geographic Your Shot)

Snow-covered metasequoia trees, also called dawn redwoods, interlace over a road in Takashima, Japan. (Photograph by Takahiro Bessho, National Geographic Your Shot)

Sunlight glances off mineral strata of different colors in Dushanzi Grand Canyon, China. (Photograph by Yuhan Liao, National Geographic Your Shot)

Typically a shy species, a Caribbean reef shark investigates a remote-triggered camera in Cuba’s Gardens of the Queen marine protected area. (Photograph by Shane Gross, National Geographic Your Shot)

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. (Photograph by Alejandro Prieto, National Geographic Your Shot)

On the flanks of Kilauea Volcano, Hawai’i, the world’s only lava ocean entry spills molten rock into the Pacific Ocean. After erupting in early 2016, the lava flow took about two months to reach the sea, six miles away. (Photograph by Greg C., National Geographic Your Shot)

A summer thunderstorm unleashes lightning on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. (Photograph by Mike Olbinski Photography, National Geographic Your Shot)

Buoyed by the Gulf Stream, a flying fish arcs through the night-dark water five miles off Palm Beach, Florida. (Photograph by Michael Patrick O’Neill, National Geographic Your Shot)

Two grey herons spar as a white-tailed eagle looks on in Hungary. (Photograph by Bence Mate, National Geographic Your Shot)

Green vegetation blooms at the river’s edge, or riparian, zone of a meandering canyon in Utah. (Photograph by David Swindler, National Geographic Your Shot)

Migratory gulls take flight from a cedar tree being washed downstream by a glacial riverinBritish Columbia, Canada. (Photograph by Agathe Bernard, National Geographic Your Shot)

Morning fog blurs the dead trees of Romania’s Lake Cuejdel, a natural reservoir created by landslides. (Photograph by Gheorghe Popa, National Geographic Your Shot)

Preparing to strike, tarpon cut through a ribbon-like school of scad off the coast of Bonaire in the Caribbean Sea. (Photograph by Jennifer O’Neil, National Geographic Your Shot)

A Japanese macaque indulges in some grooming time on the shores of the famous hot springs. (Photograph by Lance McMillan, National Geographic Your Shot)

Sunset illuminates a lighthouse and rainbow in the Faroe Islands. (Photograph by Wojciech Kruczyński, National Geographic Your Shot)

A Portuguese man-of-war nears the beach on a summer morning; thousands of these jellyfish wash up on Australia’s eastern coast every year. (Photograph by Matthew Smith, National Geographic Your Shot)

A great gray owl swoops to kill in a New Hampshire field. (Photograph by Harry Collins, National Geographic Your Shot)