Wildlife Photographer of the Year - People's Choice Award Nominee

Aspen Shadows

Selected from Sixty Thousand

Every year, the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition draws entries from the world's finest nature photographers — a global gathering of vision, patience, and extraordinary luck. In 2024, for WPY60, roughly 60,000 images were submitted. From that immense field, judges identified 100 winning images. Then they went one step further: they chose an additional 25 photographs to put before a worldwide public vote for the People's Choice Award.

Aspen Shadows was one of those 25. To have an image speak loudly enough to rise from 60,000 entries into that select group is something I had a hard time believing at first. Developed and produced by the Natural History Museum in London, the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition is widely regarded as the Oscars of wildlife photography — the most prestigious event of its kind in the world. An invitation to the awards ceremony and dinner is a rare honor in itself; past guests have included Sir David Attenborough and the Princess of Wales. The story behind the photograph matters just as much as the accolade, perhaps more.

Patience in Lamar Valley

Lamar Valley in Yellowstone National Park is the kind of place that rewards the patient and humbles the hurried. Known as the Serengeti of North America, its wide-open sightlines make it one of the best places on Earth to observe wolves in the wild. On this particular morning, a pack of four gray wolves was moving purposefully across the snowfield — heads low, single-file, reading the land for signs of prey.

I was watching from a considerable distance, the pack appearing small against the vast white expanse. In wildlife photography, that can feel like a disadvantage. But I've learned to reframe it: smallness within a landscape isn't a limitation — it's a compositional invitation. I started asking myself where the scene might offer something beyond a straight wildlife shot.

That's when I noticed the aspens. A small cluster of white-barked trees stood ahead of the wolves' line of travel — vertical strokes of silver and grey against the snow. I thought to myself: if they walk through there, this could be something special. So I waited.

The Frame

They walked right past those trees. One by one, four wolves ghosted through the aspen grove — their dark forms threading between pale trunks, the negative space of snow filling every gap. The minimalism of the scene was almost shocking: no color, no clutter, just the graphic geometry of trees and the quiet urgency of four predators on the move. Then they continued along the tree line and, just as quietly as they had appeared, vanished over the hillside.

The photograph is titled Aspen Shadows because that's what the wolves become in the frame — shadows among shadows, ancient and elusive, patterned into the landscape like something the forest itself had conjured. I think about that often when I look at this image. These animals belong here in a way that feels elemental.

Safe Within the Lines — But Only Just

Wolves are one of the most polarizing subjects in American conservation. Their reintroduction to Yellowstone in 1995 remains one of the great rewilding success stories — a cascade of ecological restoration that reshaped river courses, revived vegetation, and rebalanced entire food webs. But that success story has a sharp edge at its borders.

Inside Yellowstone, wolves are protected. They roam freely, observed by researchers, photographers, and visitors who travel from across the globe for exactly the kind of encounter I had that morning. But park boundaries are human constructs. A wolf doesn't experience a line on a map. The same animal that walks safely through a meadow in Lamar Valley can cross an invisible threshold and find itself in unprotected territory — where hunting seasons, livestock conflicts, and deeply held disagreements about land management determine its fate.

It's a tension that sits with me every time I photograph these animals. There is something profound and troubling about watching a wolf move through the world with such freedom and confidence, knowing the fragility of the protections that surround them. Aspen Shadows was made from a place of reverence and I hope it carries that forward to everyone who sees it.