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Jason Moore won the 2023 Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards overall prize with “Air Guitar Roo,” a photograph of a female western grey kangaroo in a flower-filled field near Perth, Australia. The image also won Creatures of the Land. Other recognized entries featured a plunging heron, an otter, greenfinches, a ground squirrel and a penguin.
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Who won the 2023 Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards?
Australian photographer Jason Moore took the overall award with “Air Guitar Roo,” which also won Creatures of the Land. ABC News reported that Moore made the photograph in August 2021, more than two years before it won the contest. The image shows a female western grey kangaroo among yellow flowers near Perth. Award coverage noted that Moore got down to the animals’ eye level.
Moore said of the picture: “When I saw this Roo striking the air guitar pose, it immediately brought a smile to my face, and I knew that I had captured something really special.” The playful title describes how the pose looks; it is not evidence that the kangaroo was deliberately mimicking a person playing guitar.
#1 Best Overall
Other named winners and recognized photographs
Nature TTL’s detailed results name these other winners and distinctions:
| Award or distinction | Photographer and image | Subject and location |
|---|---|---|
| Creatures of the Air | Vittorio Ricci, “Unexpected Plunge” | A striated heron at Zimanga Private Game Reserve, South Africa |
| Under Water | Otter Kwek, “Otter Ballerina” | A smooth-coated otter in Singapore |
| Junior and People’s Choice | Jacek Stankiewicz, “Dispute” | Greenfinches in Białowieża Forest, Poland |
| Amazing Internet Portfolio | Timea Ambrus, a four-image sequence | A ground squirrel |
| Video Award | Lily Bernau, “Too Cold” | A penguin that appears reluctant to enter the sea |
Some coverage spells the otter title as “Otter Ballerinas”; “Otter Ballerina” is the wording used in the award report. Nature TTL describes six category winners and lists the Junior result together with its People’s Choice distinction. The labels above follow its reporting rather than treating the People’s Choice mention as a separate, additional winner.
Highly Commended entries
Ten other entries received Highly Commended recognition. Among those named in coverage were John Blumenkamp’s “Monday Blahs,” featuring a great gray owl, and Tzahi Finkelstein’s “The Happy Turtle,” showing a dragonfly on a turtle. These are examples, not the complete list.
How large was the 2023 contest?
ABC News and Nature TTL reported 5,300 entries from 85 countries. Nature TTL also reported 1,842 entrants. Entries and entrants are different measures: the first counts submissions, while the second counts people entering. These figures describe the contest as reported in 2023, not the number of finalists or winning photographs.
Global News reported that the awards were founded in 2015 by professional photographers Paul Joynson-Hicks and Tom Sullam.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What is the awards’ conservation connection?
Global News reported that licensing income from photographs supports grassroots conservation organizations and that proceeds from the 2023 awards would go to the Whitley Fund for Nature. That is a reported connection between image licensing and conservation funding; it does not mean the contest itself is a charity or that all sales and licensing revenue go to conservation. The available reporting does not establish an amount raised or an independent measure of conservation impact.
Rank #4
The junior entrant’s People’s Choice result also prompted co-founder Tom Sullam to emphasize engaging young photographers. He said: “We want more juniors to enter, we want to take our conservation message and our love of photography to the younger generation and this result proves that young photographers have as much chance of winning as anybody else.”
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