Australian photographer Ross Gudgeon has won the grand prize at Close-up Photographer of the Year 7. His Fractal Forest is an extraordinary underwater image he took inside a cauliflower soft coral in the Lembeh Strait, Indonesia. The image earned Gudgeon the top award and a £2,500 prize, and it’s genuinely unlike anything else in this year’s competition.

A Perspective You’ve Never Seen Before

Fractal Forest was photographed from inside a soft coral, revealing a world that most of us will never witness. Ross Gudgeon explains more about the winning photo:

“Named for its cauliflower-like form, this soft coral is made up of countless small, rounded polyps that give it a puffy texture. I wanted to explore a perspective that isn’t possible with conventional lenses, and an underwater probe lens allowed me to do that. By carefully threading the lens through the coral’s branches without disturbing them, I was able to photograph the subject from the inside looking-out, offering a different view of a common marine organism.”

The result is a photo that feels almost abstract at first glance, yet is entirely real. And the jurz was so smitten that it also won the Underwater category, not just the overall prize. Oh, and in case it looks familiar, it’s the same photo that won the 2025 Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year. Go, Ross!

More About Close-up Photographer of the Year 7

The seventh edition of the competition attracted over 12,000 entries from 63 countries. A jury of 22 expert photographers, naturalists, and editors spent more than 20 hours on Zoom calls to select the winners and the Top 100 images.

This year’s winning images span 11 categories: Animals, Insects, Butterflies & Dragonflies, Arachnids, Invertebrate Portrait, Underwater, Plants, Fungi & Slime Moulds, Intimate Landscape, Studio Art, and Young Close-up Photographer of the Year (for entrants aged 17 or under).

Speaking about the overall standard, CUPOTY co-founder Tracy Calder said:

“This was the toughest competition yet. The winning image embodies everything close-up photography can achieve – it shows us a perspective we’ve never seen before and reveals hidden beauty in a familiar subject. The judges were captivated.”

Category Winners

Like every year, the Close-up Photographer of the Year 7 brings us the selection of category winners as well. We’ll show you the best of the best below, and make sure to visit the contest website to explore the complete gallery and enjoy the tiny worlds that appear before your eyes.