How to Choose Your Entries for Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2027

In this article from The Underwater Photography Show, we'll be speculating on how to choose your entries for Wildlife Photographer of the Year (WPY) 2027, from understanding the judges to knowing what the competition rewards.

This topic was proposed by a listener, and because we love the Wildlife Photographer of the Year, we always enjoy the chance to talk about it. But most importantly, do remember this is informed guesswork! I (Alex) can assure you that if Matt and I had all the answers, we'd both be winning every year, and we're not! So what follows is a handful of hopefully helpful observations, not a recipe for success.

The most important thing with any competition is that you have to be in it to win it. And if you are going to take part, then make a proper effort. Don't do what I do, which is race around on the last day and throw some pictures in. Entry is open now and runs until Thursday 3 December, so you still have well over a month.

I'd start the selection process now. I go to my Lightroom catalog, look through my favorites from this year's trips, and drag those favorites into a new Collection called something like "WPY 2027". The earlier you start, the more time you have to process those pictures properly (following the rules), and to make sure you still love them after three or four viewings, not just because you were excited when you took them. I'll also dip back into my WPY 2026 Collection and see if there is anything I'd like to try again.

Wildlife Photographer of the Year wants wildlife-focused images, and the ethical side of the competition has been tightened right up during the last couple of years. Anything ethically questionable is going to go out, and these days that includes baiting and any sort of attraction or manipulation. You can expect the judges to want to be squeaky clean on this – so anything questionable is a wasted entry. Blackwater images are now a really interesting conundrum – because it can be argued that the downline lights (which are needed as a point of reference for the divers) are also a form of attraction. It will be interesting to see when WPY next awards a blackwater picture, if it ever does, and how that rule will be interpreted by different juries down the years. You can communicate with the competition office for clarification, but ultimately, it's the judging panel that decides when they gather, based on what is said in the room.

The WPY judging style has been settled and coherent over the last three years. So start by looking back through the underwater images from those years to get a feel for what they are favoring currently. Three years ago was also the last time Tony Wu was the underwater judge, and he's back again this year, so that edition's underwater category is well worth studying in detail. Although all the judges judge all the categories, having sat on lots of wildlife photography competitions, I can tell you that when it gets to the underwater category, the land photographers say, "You're the expert, you decide," or "I really love these shots but I don't know if they're special." So the underwater category is always primarily determined by the underwater expert on the panel.

Tony is particularly known for shooting cetaceans, unique behaviors, and revealing shots of creatures across Southeast Asia, from the temperate waters of Japan, where he lives, down into the tropics of the Coral Triangle. Looking at that previous WPY judging, I'd say that with subjects he's known for, he's harder to impress. He's a fastidious, hardworking photographer who has taken thousands of shots of those subjects and only shows the public the pinnacle of his work, having already rejected all his own lesser frames. When he sees your shot of a whale or a shrimp, it's probably not as good as one of his rejects of that subject! He's likely to conclude it is not up to WPY standards. So I'd steer away from his signature subjects. Some judges might be swayed by the sort of shot they shoot themselves, but with Tony I think you're more likely to impress him with subjects he's never worked with.

Tony also judges Ocean Art each year, but I would not use that as a guide. That's not a contest he would enter himself, so in that case he'd just choose what he thinks is the best shot. In WPY, he'd also be asking, "Is this WPY worthy?"

The rest of the panel is dominated by a National Geographic style of shooting. Kathy Moran chairs the panel and previously headed National Geographic photography editing for decades and trained most of its photographers as storytelling photojournalists. She is joined by two of her most decorated photojournalists, Charlie Hamilton James and Karine Aigner, both of whom also have very impressive track records of success in the contest. In recent years WPY has increased the number of storytelling, narrative-style images it has awarded, and I'd expect that to continue with this judging panel. If you have pictures that tell a story to a standard that could impress them, you could have a really good chance.

In the episode where we reviewed the 2026 WPY winners, I divided every awarded underwater picture from the last three years by where it was taken: fresh water, cold ocean water, and warm ocean water. Warm ocean water is where the typical underwater photographer operates, from coral reefs and tropical muck diving to blackwater photography and shooting big animals in the blue, whether that's cetacean photography or bait balls. The warm tropics is where most underwater biodiversity is (the most species) and where the vast majority of underwater photos are taken – but the tropical ocean slices of the pie have been very small in all three years. Freshwater rivers and lakes – which account for just 0.007% of water on Earth – have yielded a huge slice of winners!

To me that says the judges, when it comes to underwater images, are currently most interested in the most original underwater subjects. It hasn't always been this way. There have been periods when the competition didn't care what you shot as long as it was shot in an interesting way (this still holds with above-water shots). In other periods, big animals were king, and it used to be a joke that the underwater category was won by whoever had seen the coolest big animal that year. Blackwater photos dominated for a while too. But in the current era, it's pretty clear that if you shoot in the environments where most underwater photographers do, you're competing against everyone else for one slot, maybe two, in the contest, while photographers working in different habitats have a much better chance.

Before you run out and buy a drysuit for freshwater diving, remember that these things always change. Usually just as you get a handle on the judging trend, it gets turned on its head. But our best guess for now is still to give the judges something they haven't seen before.

When we review the winners each year, a few themes come up again and again. The judges love underwater pictures with an otherworldly feel, ones that don't look like anything you could have shot on land. If an image makes you think "this could be an alien planet," it can do very well.

Another general tip is that your pictures that do well on Instagram are unlikely to do as well here. On Instagram, people look at small images on a phone screen, so likes tend to go to pictures with impact at a small size, where the whole picture is "wow" but the detail doesn't matter as much. The WPY judges see pictures projected big on a big screen, and they are going to appreciate interest right across the frame, with small details that you can notice and enjoy over repeated viewings, as well as the total impact. So judge your pictures full screen on your monitor, and don't choose only the ones that have received the most likes on your socials (but do try those too).

Remember you are showing your pictures to some very experienced photographers. If you can give them something they haven't seen before, something to lock onto in a judging room, so that they say "I love this one because…," your chances definitely improve. Anything innovative or creative, whether photographically or, as we've seen in recent years, in subject matter, is going to help.

WPY now allows 25 entries, and most successful photographers this year got one, maybe two pictures awarded. Even the overall winner presumably had 23 of their pictures rejected (they did get two winners). So everyone loses with most of their entries, and everyone is putting in their best. My approach is to make sure each picture has a reason why I want it in there. Sometimes it will simply be because it is my favorite shot from last year, and if it were awarded I'd be so excited for myself. Other times I'll go for images that are the sort of thing they've been choosing in recent years, but with a nice twist or a fresh approach.

Between now and the announcement of the winners, the big TV series Blue Planet 3 will be on air, and it will introduce some very high-profile marine stories. Hopefully this will increase the number of ocean and tropical ocean images they award. You can bet that the whole judging panel will watch it (they are all nature lovers) and they may well be drawn to pictures that link back to grand stories of the show. If you can watch some of it before entries close, and have shots of some of the stars, it's probably worthwhile trying those subjects as they will be in vogue. This last year, for example, I thought it would be a great year to enter a British octopus photo because they had been all over the news – and Aaron Sanders won one of the largest categories – Portraits – with one. That's why I think we'll see something Blue Planet 3-related winning.

That's pretty much everything I can think of in terms of trends. Once again, please remember this is educated guesswork, but hopefully it stirs some helpful thoughts. And probably, almost none of it will come true!

You can hear the full discussion, including the other topics we covered in the episode, in the video below.