Stubbornness is key to getting an award-winning wildlife photo

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Photographer Charles Davis believes there’s something more important than a fancy camera or an exotic animal when it comes to capturing the perfect wildlife snap. Stubbornness is his superpower.

Charles Davis’ award-winning shot PJ & Crabs which is on display at the Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year exhibition at the Australian Museum.

“People always tell me, oh, you must be so patient,” Davis says. “And I’m like, no, I’m stubborn. It’s all about how much can you bang your head against that rock and come back and do it again.

“If it takes a week, that’s an easy photo. It’s the photos that have taken years that I still haven’t got, that’s where the stubbornness comes in.”

Davis’ persistence has paid off with two award-winning shots in the Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year exhibition that has just opened at the Australian Museum.

He won the “animals in nature” category with PJ & Crabs, a shot of a Port Jackson shark above an enormous horde of spider crabs.

Charles Davis’ shot Jabiru Leaf features at the Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year exhibition at the Australian Museum.

These crabs congregate annually in Victoria’s Port Phillip Bay to shed their shells, which leaves them vulnerable so they gather in spectacular numbers.

To get the shot Davis not only had to learn to use an underwater camera, but also how to free dive. It required him to dive seven metres down into 11-degree water.

But that image wasn’t even what he’d had in mind; he’d been hoping to find a one-of-a-kind white bull ray.

“Often you’ll find something that’s even better than what you wanted,” Davis says.

“Everyone else in the water that day were scuba divers, so they were down the bottom and didn’t see what I was seeing. I was up top on the surface looking straight down, so I saw the shot.”

Ross Gudgeon’s Fractal Forest, showing patterns of cauliflower soft coral in Indonesia’s Lembeh Strait. It was the overall winner in the 2025 Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year competition.

His other win was in the “aerial” category for Jabiru Leaf, which shows a stork flying over tidal flats. It’s of personal significance to Davis as the shot was inspired by a late family friend, Roger, a helicopter pilot who loved to fly over the Wyndham mudflats in Western Australia.

After Roger’s memorial service Davis hired a chopper to go over the area and convinced the pilot to take off the doors and bank hard to get the picture.

Liftoff by photographer Talia Greis shows a paper nautilus riding a jellyfish in Sydney waters. It was the “macro” winner in the 2025 Australian Geographic Nature Photographer competition.

“I’d spent a lot of time hanging out of choppers, but this guy was used to taking retired couples out sightseeing,” Davis says. “I think Roger would have been really proud to see that place that he enjoyed so much given coverage.”

The two images are among 120 photographs displayed at exhibition, whittled down from 1864 entries.

The photograph Skink in a Tight Spot by NSW photographer Sara Corlis won the “impact” prize.

For the first time the winning shots of the last 20 years will be shown alongside the finalists for 2025. This year’s overall winner is Ross Gudgeon’s Fractal Forest, which vividly captures the psychedelic patterns of cauliflower soft coral in Indonesia’s Lembeh Strait.

While Davis, who has entered the competition for 12 years straight, says wildlife photography is challenging, it’s only for reasons of time and money, never because of the animals.

“You could take the best photo in the world in your front garden on any given day, if you could just find what that was, whether it was an insect with another insect or a bird doing something outrageous,” he says. “Those things exist in front of you all the time. You just need to be receptive to seeing them.”

The 2025 Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year exhibition is at the Australian Museum until February 15.