Professional photographers and passionate conservationists Paul Joynson-Hicks and Tom Sullam founded the contest back in 2015. Their goal was to create a refreshing, fun, and free-to-enter photography competition, in order to showcase the funniest images of Planet Earth’s wildlife.

Sullam, the co-founder of the contest, shed some light on the role of timing in wildlife photography. He told Bored Panda that its importance cannot be understated.

“It is THE essence of the art. The single best tip to get that decisive moment is to watch your subject and see how it moves, where it turns its head, how it flicks its tail, how its back, legs, neck move, and so on,” the photographer shared some practical advice with everyone.

“Learn to see these movements—in this way, you can pre-empt the behavior. You cannot predict behavior but you can pre-empt a movement and be ready to fire that shutter! Obviously, the right settings on your camera goes without saying!”

Meanwhile, Michelle Wood, a member of the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards organizing team, clarified a few things regarding the use of photo editing software and post-processing. In short, the competition requires entrants to be very transparent about what they do.

“We have quite straightforward guidelines on this. All images entered also have to be submitted as a raw file so we can see the original capture and check the quality,” Wood explained to Bored Panda.

“We also ask for the surrounding shots of the image to make sure that the entry is authentic,” she added.

Point 9 in the competition’s Terms and Conditions states that: “No digital manipulation. You can, of course, make basic digital corrections (including tone and contrast, burning, dodging, cropping, sharpening, noise reduction, and minor cleaning work) but DO NOT ALTER THE INTEGRITY OF THE IMAGE,” the organizers explain.

“If you reach the finals, we will ask for the original image and we have the finest team of digital detectives on the planet to make sure every image is verified. These guys are serious pixel Sherlocks, so pay attention, no cheating!” This means that what you see is what you get! It's all authentic.

This year’s contest was absolutely humongous in scope. A jaw-dropping 1,842 people took part in the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards in 2023, submitting a whopping 5,300 entries. Not only that but the contest was truly global: the competitors were from 85 countries around the world.

Moore, the overall winner, took a photo of a female Western Grey Kangaroo in the outer suburbs of Perth, Australia. He won a once-in-a-lifetime safari in the Masai Mara, Kenya, with Alex Walker’s Serian. He also won a unique handmade trophy from the Wonder Workshop in Tanzania, as well as a photography bag from THINK TANK.

“I had been out with my camera photographing some waterfowl at a nearby lake. I had been up at sunrise to take advantage of the ‘golden hour’ light, but it turned out to be a disappointing morning on the water,” Moore opened up about the day he took his brilliant photo, ‘Air Guitar Roo.’

“After leaving the lake, somewhat dejected, I decided to swing past an area of open bushland that I know of, because there are often a ‘mob’ of Kangaroos feeding and sunning themselves in a field close to the road (it’s on my way to and from work so I drive past it every day),” he said.

“When I arrived, there were a number of Kangaroos in the field. The morning light was still favorable so I grabbed my camera and headed off to a spot where I could get down to eye level with my subjects, amongst the biting ticks (the lengths we go to, just to get that perfect image.) I ended up shooting about 40 or 50 frames of the Kangaroos with various content including Mums, Joeys, and also some action shots of them bouncing along through the yellow field,” the photographer shared.

Moore actually took the original photo all the way back in August 2021. “The shoot turned out to be a great session, and I am quite fond of several images that I captured. Not many people know that Kangaroos are normally fairly docile and even a bit boring most of the time, if I’m honest. However, 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.”

‘Air Guitar Roo’ was very popular with all the judges for its “happy vibe and feel-good factor,” what the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards is all about, at its core.

Aside from the overall winner, there were 6 category winners. Among them was young photographer Jacek Stankiewicz with ‘Dispute,’ featuring two greenfinches. Stankiewicz won the Junior Award and also nabbed the Affinity Photo People’s Choice Award—the public vote. 2023 is the very first year that this award has been won by a junior entry.

“One of the greatest pleasures we experience in this competition is seeing the incredible standard of photography, combined with humor, which consistently increases each year. This year’s People’s Choice Award winner is like the cherry on the cake. To have a junior entrant win this major prize is extremely rewarding for us,” competition co-founder and pro photographer Sullam 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. The unique combination of humor and photography allows for a much broader range of winners, and we are so thrilled to award the PCA title to Jacek this year.”

Among the other category winners was Vittorio Ricci who won the Creatures of the Air Award for a photo of a striated heron, ‘Unexpected Plunge’ and Otter Kwek who aced the Under Water Category with his Ballerina Otter photo taken in Singapore.

Timea Ambrus won the Portfolio Award with a collection of 4 images showing a ground squirrel while the Video Award went to Lily Bernau for her film ‘Too Cold’ about a penguin seemingly refusing to go into the sea.

The judges also felt there were 10 entries that ought to be recognized as Highly Commended Winners: Tzahi Finkelstein, John Blumenkamp, Zoe Ashdown, Brian Matthews, Lara Matthews, Delphine Casimir, Pratick Mondal, Wendy Kaveney, Jacques Poulard and Dakota Vaccaro.  

If you’d like to see this year’s finalists in full, check out Bored Panda’s earlier article. In the meantime, be sure to take a peek at the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards top entrants from previous years, too: 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018.