ZSL Animal Photography Prize 2016

The ZSL Animal Photography Prize is an annual competition run by the Zoological Society of London, launched in 2012 with the aim of inspiring both amateur and professional photographers to capture the wonders of the animal kingdom. In 2016, the competition was sponsored by Lumix UK (Panasonic), and nearly 3,000 stunning shots were submitted from around the world, celebrating the wonder and diversity of nature. The standout photographer of the 2016 ZSL Animal Photography Prize was Pratik Pradhan, a young Indian nature photographer from Badlapur, Maharashtra, who took the overall winner's title with a vivid and colourful image of a fan-throated lizard, captured at the Chalkewadi plateau in India's Satara district. The winning photograph, titled Ready Set Go, also earned Pradhan the Judges' Choice award. The male fan-throated lizard's dewlap becomes brilliantly coloured in shades of red and blue during the breeding season, and when running, the lizard quickly often adopts a bipedal mode of locomotion — a dynamic quality that made the image immediately arresting. Pradhan is known for his meticulous preparation, spending considerable time researching his subjects, studying their movement and behaviour in the field for days before taking a shot, and has at times waited over three years to capture an image exactly as he pre-visualised it. On the junior side of the competition, London-based photographer Gideon Knight took the junior category win in the 'Deep and Meaningful' category, demonstrating that the prize drew exceptional talent from both emerging young photographers closer to home and seasoned wildlife specialists from across the globe.