Wildlife Photographer of the Year - Urban wildlifeWildlife Photographer of the Year - Urban wildlife 

This is ‘Tiger in Town’ by Robin Darius Conz from Germany. This photograph was taken in Nilgiris, Tamil Nadu, India and is the 2024 category winner of ‘Urban Wildlife’. On the right-hand side of the image, there's a grassy slope, possibly the side of a large hill or mountain. It slopes from the middle of the right edge down to almost the left-hand bottom corner of the photograph. There are green tufts and bushes on this slope, then lying halfway up there is a tiger. The tiger is lying on its side with its legs and belly facing the front. It looks relaxed. Its head is turned to the left, though it's not clear if it's looking at anything in particular. Its body is aligned with the hilly slope, but its head is turned as if it's looking over its front shoulder. There are black stripes across its orange body. These stripes are on the legs, its body, paws and onto the face. The chest is white and there is also white under the chin and around the eyes. The tail looks black and white. There is also a bit of white peeking out from the belly and the back of the rear legs. It looks healthy and very majestic sitting there. Behind the tiger in the background is a valley. The landscape is not flat. There are different levels to it, where perhaps mountains or hills on the opposite side rise up. As well as the lush green vegetation, it is also an urban environment. There is the one cluster of homes, perhaps a small village, in the centre, and then individual homes and buildings scattered across the landscape. The centre settlement is a cluster of rooftops and houses. The house are different colours, some yellow, some green. All have red roofs. The cluster is in the shape of a diamond. Maybe that's like 30 to 50 houses in this village. There are also some other houses dotted along the photograph at the back. Around this main cluster the land seems to have been divided up with trees or hedges. There are some patches there that are brown from bare soil and others that are different shades of green. These might be fields. There are occasional wispy bits of what might be smoke or low-lying cloud. The top of the image is the sky, and it's completely covered by dark clouds. They look like rainy, stormy clouds. This might be a region where it rains a lot. The grass is really lush and green. There are some industrial type looking buildings in the left-hand area of the photograph. There are also yellow dots of lights scattered across the background, perhaps from cars or buildings or even lampposts. On the left-hand side of the image is a winding road. There are a couple of buildings either side of the road. The start and end point of the road are out of the frame of the photograph. The landscape looks to be made up of diagonal lines, creating lots of geometric shapes and patterns. There is the hillside on which the tiger is sitting, the patchwork of fields, and the grassland behind it. There are also lots of different shades of green, with the orange of the tiger standing out among the green. It's a shame, because it looks a bit rural and nice in the middle, but then at the back it does look like an industrial area. This contrasts with the tiger that's sitting on the slope. It shows this relationship and overlap between humans and animals. It is strange to see how the two coexist in this photograph.