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Jaime Rojo won the Grand Prize in the 2024 BigPicture: Natural World Photography Competition for The Forest of the Monarchs. The California Academy of Sciences announced the jury-selected results on June 18, 2024. Six photographers won category awards, and Wayne Lai later received the competition’s inaugural People’s Choice Award.
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Who won the 2024 BigPicture Grand Prize?
Jaime Rojo’s The Forest of the Monarchs received the Grand Prize. Made at the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in Michoacán, Mexico, the image shows monarch butterflies clustered on trees at an overwintering site. The Academy said Rojo had spent years studying the butterflies; the image’s exact number of butterflies was not reported as a measured count.
The 2024 competition was BigPicture’s 11th annual edition, organized by the California Academy of Sciences. Its theme, “Unusual Perspectives,” encouraged photographers to find unexpected ways to depict nature and conservation.
#1 Best Overall
Who were the category winners?
| Category | Winner | Winning image and subject |
|---|---|---|
| Aquatic Life | Shane Gross | Tadpole Migration, western toad tadpoles in a Vancouver Island lake |
| Winged Life | Franco Banfi | Underwater Harmony and Chaos, northern gannets feeding off the Shetland Islands |
| Terrestrial Wildlife | Hema Palan | Beauty of the Desert, a sand racer in India’s Thar Desert |
| Human/Nature | Maddy Rifka | Good Fire, cultural burning in California’s Hoopa Valley |
| Landscapes, Waterscapes, and Flora | Geo Cloete | In Celebration, sea anemones in a South African tidepool |
| Photo Story | Peter Mather | Ghosts of the North, a five-photo Arctic wildlife series |
The Academy said each category winner received $1,000. Its 2024 results announcement reported $12,000 in competition cash prizes, plus $300 for the People’s Choice winner.
Who won the People’s Choice Award?
Chinese photographer Wayne Lai won the inaugural People’s Choice Award for an image of a Cape gannet diving into a school of fish. The Academy reported that more than 5,000 people voted. This was a separate audience award, not the jury-selected Grand Prize.
Rank #2
Which finalists and other images were highlighted?
The Academy’s results announcement pointed readers to the Grand Prize, First Place, and category finalists. bioGraphic’s June 18, 2024 gallery showed the winners alongside selected editorial favorites, so its examples should not be mistaken for a complete finalist roster. Among the photographers and images it named were Georgina Steytler’s March of the Spider Orchids and Kathleen Borshanian’s A Moment in the Sun.
How many entries and exhibit images were there?
The Academy reported 7,393 submitted images from photographers representing nearly 70 countries. Separately, its September 2024 exhibit announcement said the exhibition included 48 images by photographers from 25 countries. Those figures describe different stages of the competition: submissions versus images selected for the exhibit. The Academy also reported more than 5,000 People’s Choice voters.
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The Academy announced that the exhibition would open at its San Francisco Piazza on September 28, 2024, and remain through April 13, 2025. It also said a museum tour was expected to begin in winter 2025 in collaboration with the American Museum of Natural History. Those were announced dates and plans; they do not establish the exhibition’s current status.
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