The Greatest Wildlife Photographer – Kenya competition has announced its May 2025 selections, spotlighting striking images of Kenya’s biodiversity while raising funds for conservation organisations.
Proceeds from the initiative support key conservation partners including the Elephant Queen Trust, Ewaso Lions, Grevy’s Zebra Trust, Kenya Bird of Prey Trust, Mara Elephant Project and the Pangolin Project.
The competition continues monthly, offering a platform for amateur and professional photographers to contribute to wildlife protection through visual storytelling.
Here are the finalists for May 2025:
“Six lion brothers had isolated a buffalo from its herd. The lions managed to bring the buffalo down twice but their formidable foe, weighing 900kg, managed to shake them off, stand up and bravely fight on. The lions managed to bring it down for the third time. It looked like it was all over for the, by now, exhausted buffalo. However, all was not lost! A nearby heard of buffalo, about 400 strong, suddenly decided to come to his rescue and charged. The lions scattered in fear. Amazingly, the buffalo stood up, had a shake and walked off with the herd as if nothing had happened.”
“Amboseli has a way of reminding you how close life and death live to each other out here. The landscape still bore the scars of one of the worst droughts in recent memory. Carcasses lay scattered across the dust, their bones bleached by the sun. Silent, weighty reminders of what had been lost. But on this day, something shifted. The rains had finally begun to return. I saw the giraffe walking slowly, almost deliberately, across the cracked earth. As he moved past the skeleton of a fallen grazer, the distant curtain of rain and storm clouds began to roll in behind him. It was one of those ideal moments when nature seems to lay everything bare: the past, the present and the fragile promise of renewal.”
“On our final game drive in Mara North, we witnessed a deeply intimate moment: a lioness moving her cub to a safer place, the baby gently hanging from her jaws, limp, eyes closed, completely trusting. As she walked toward our vehicle, her eyes briefly met my lens: unwavering, fierce and full of purpose.”
“A herd of elephants were feeding and it was clear some of the younger ones wanted to move on but the matriarch was not ready. One of the sub-adults impatiently flopped down at the feet of the matriarch who put her comforting trunk over its head. At the same time, the baby elephant clumsily backed over the sub-adult’s foreleg and slipped between its leg and trunk as if it were wrapped up by its older sibling. What I like most about this image is that it captures not only the interactions within this family of elephants but also the individual personalities: the caring mother, the sulky teenager (with a soft spot for its younger sibling) and the playful youngster. A wonderful behavioural portrait.”
“I am increasingly drawn to trying to capture animals in the environment, particularly when they are as beautiful as this in Namunyak Conservancy in Samburu in Northern Kenya. This is home for the reticulated giraffe, a species I have never photographed before. On this afternoon, all the elements came together as the giraffe moved across the semi-desert framed by the Matthews range in the background – all illuminated by late afternoon golden light.”
“Halftail stood alone on a small rise in the Maasai Mara, his gaze fixed on the grasslands that stretched endlessly before him. He was watching over the marsh pride – his pride – as the storm gathered overhead. The sky darkened over him, the kind of clouds that roll in with purpose and, for a moment, everything fell silent. It was one of those really charged instances in the wild when the elements and the subject seemed to conspire together to tell a deeper story.”
“I was sitting quietly in a relatively poor light among the trees and noticed my first ever Ross’s Turaco a few metres away at about eye level. We saw each other at the same time and I’m not sure who looked most surprised!”
“We were spending the afternoon with a big pack of wild dogs, which were enjoying a siesta when a big bull elephant decided to show up to have a sip at the waterhole. The quiet ambience rapidly turned into rubble rumble as the elephant was not too keen on the dogs sitting in his pathway and decided to chase them away. We were ideally positioned to capture the moment with perfect light conditions behind the action. Seeing wild dogs is always special. Witnessing a fight between wild dogs and an elephant in such a remote part of Tsavo, and with golden light, is simply surreal.”
“I was able to get this image of a one-month-old rhino calf and its mother by lying on the ground and using my 400mm lens. Rhino calves are born without horns and these develop from about six months. Hopefully in this reserve, which has incredible protection for the rhinos, the calf will grow horns as big as his mother’s without fear from poachers.
“We had found a male leopard known as Tulia, drawn in by a nearby female. We stayed with him for hours, just watching and waiting. As it got darker, we decided to try something different and repositioned ourselves to shoot with backlight. Just as we got into place, he stood up and stretched. It was one of those moments that makes your heart race.”
