Wildlife Photographer of the Year - Young photographers 15-17 Wildlife Photographer of the Year - Young photographers 15-17  

This is ‘Life Under Deadwood’ by Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas from Germany. This photograph was taken in Berlin, Germany, and is the 2024 category winner of ‘Young Photographers 15 to 17 years’. It also won the overall title of Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year. This is quite an unusual image. It is in a landscape format. Two big things are the main subjects of the photograph, the one on the left takes up about half of the image. The thing on the left has a spherical body. This is an animal called a spring tail. It looks a bit alien. You can see the spherical body and you can see it has some legs. We can only see three legs coming out of it towards us, but I'm guessing there's probably more on the other side, but we can't see that. It looks like it's a bit scaly, but its scales almost under the first layer of skin. It's purple, orange and brown in colour. On the spherical shape it's got these things that look like silver spikes or pins coming out. It looks a bit like a pincushion, but I'm guessing they're probably hairs. The hairs on the body are quite long and the legs have little ones, they’re hairy legs. It has an oval shaped head with antennae attached. You can't see all the antennae because they are out of focus. Its eye really looks like a black berry or something similar. It's got lots of different segments to it. The distance is a bit blurry and this little creature, this spring tail, is sitting on some sort of brown, slimy ground. It looks a bit like alligator skin or something like that. It looks a bit scaly and wet. To the right of the spring tail is a spherical globular thing which has a sticky slime underneath it, attaching it to the ground surface. This is called a slime mold. It almost looks like an eyeball. It looks like it's hard, maybe like it could be a glass marble. It must be shiny because I think there's light bouncing off it. It is brown with a kind of light blue swirly pattern on it. It reminds me of an ink blob. So, this is a spring tail and a slime mold, and it seems that the spring tail is looking at the slime mold. It's hard to know how big these things are because you can't see them in context as the background is blurred, the bit that the spring tail is on is in focus, but the background is not in focus. It's sort of like a landscape with giant figures in it. The image also feels autumnal with its browns and oranges. Because it's sort of wet, I think it would smell a bit damp and be a bit chilly.