“People keep asking me if it’s AI. That’s not an insult though, because it just doesn’t seem real”: photographer captures threatened species that wins Australia’s most prestigious nature photograph competitors – however his drone nearly died out on the ocean

After submitting his first-ever photograph to the celebrated Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year, photographer and drone pilot Matt Deakin has been topped the competitors’s Overall Winner. His ghost-like picture Ethereal Encounter stood out to the judges, capturing a critically endangered inexperienced sawfish swimming alongside a inexperienced turtle within the waters off the Pilbara within the far north of his dwelling State.

This 12 months’s competitors attracted 2,129 entries from 501 photographers throughout 17 nations. Deakin took the 2026 title with a picture so surreal that folks preserve asking him whether or not it is AI. He says, ” That’s not an insult though, because it just doesn’t seem real.”