Spiral: Runner-Up In Landscapes At Nature Photographer Of The Year 2026

How Many Entries Were There?

This year the competition received 27108 images from photographers around the world. They were spread over 13 categories: eleven open categories, a youth category and the Fred Hazelhoff Portfolio Award for a series of images. Last year’s edition had 24781 entries, a record at the time, so this year was bigger again.

Each category ends with a Top 5: a winner, a runner-up and three Highly Commended images.

The jury was chaired by Theo Bosboom, alongside Lana Tannir, Steffen Foerster, Louis Guillot and Ilse Koks, and they spent three full days going through the entries. Back in August I got the email that two of my images had made the Top 10 in Landscapes: Spiral and Cloudy Rivers. Nine days later I heard that Spiral was in the Top 5, but which place it had earned stayed a secret until this afternoon.

The Story Behind Spiral

I took this image in September 2025 during my West Greenland photo workshop, from the shore in Qeqertarsuaq on Disko Island. It was a very stormy day and the group was with me. While I was photographing an iceberg from a wider view with my drone, I noticed that every now and then the big swells rolling in would curl into a spiral around the iceberg’s sharpest edge.

So I stayed with it, for more than an hour. It was windy, but still manageable for the drone. It took many attempts to get both the timing and the shape of the spiral right.

To me, that’s what this image is about. Spending more time looking around and truly seeing the landscape can be of so much value in photography. I only saw the spiral because I kept watching the water around the iceberg. If you’d like to see more from that week, I wrote about it in my report from the 2025 West Greenland workshop.

Gear And Settings

Spiral was taken with the DJI Mavic 4 Pro on its main 1x camera (28mm equivalent), at 1/1000s, f/2.8 and ISO 160. That shutter speed was fast enough to freeze the swell. If you’re planning to fly there yourself, I’ve also written about the rules for flying a drone in Greenland.

Why I Wasn’t At The Ceremony

I couldn’t be in Ede myself: I start a workshop in Iceland tomorrow, and one delayed flight home would’ve meant not being there when my group arrives. That’s a risk I couldn’t take. A big thank you to the Nature Talks team for understanding, and to the jury for picking Spiral.

Congratulations to all the other winners too. There’s some incredible work among them, and you can see all the Nature Photographer of the Year 2026 results on the competition website. Spiral also has its own finalist page there.

My Other Awards This Year

It’s been a good year for competitions. Earlier in 2026 I placed second in Landscape at the FEP Awards and second in Nature’s Studio at GDT’s European Nature Photographer of the Year. And last December I won first place in “The World” at the Lowland Photo Festival with a drone image of a polar bear in East Greenland. You can find the full list on my awards page.