
Wildlife
Announcing the winners of the 2024 Canadian Wildlife Photography of the Year competition
Canadian Geographic is pleased to honour 16 photographers for their outstanding images of Canadian wildlife
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Lightning strikes a canola field from a bruised sky. An octopus mother tenderly guards her eggs. Mountain bikes tumble through the summer air. The winners of Canadian Geographic’s Canadian Photos of the Year competition — judged by Christian Fleury, Jenny Wong, Scott Forsyth, Ryan Tidman and the magazine’s editorial and design teams — bring to vivid life the meaning of the word “photography,” which means “drawing with light.” Here are the photos that put stars in the eyes of this year’s judging panel.
Our Canadian Photographer of the Year is Shane Turgeon, 47, of Edmonton and Pincher Creek, Alta., who has been chasing the light he found in photography since a nervous breakdown in 2012. “It scared the hell out of me, and in the process of that, I discovered photography,” says Turgeon. As he walked with his dogs, he started noticing dewdrops on grass, frost on leaves. “All those healing effects of nature really started to take hold.”
Growing up “at the end of a dirt road in the middle of nowhere, Saskatchewan,” Turgeon had always found solace in the night sky. “It has this profound ability to put everything in perspective, because cosmically we are absolutely insignificant.” He started practising astrophotography with those little pinpricks of light, then diversified to pursue all aspects of nature photography. When his dog, Kwinn, got sick in summer 2024, Turgeon looked for inspiration closer to home: backyard bugs, auroras dancing over waterfalls. The day after Kwinn passed, the Tsuchinshan-ATLAS comet appeared in the sky. As he chased the comet, he chased away his grief.
“Photography is this place of light,” says Turgeon. “We’re constantly chasing the light, figuratively and literally, because, in life or photography, we want that light in our life.”
These mountain bikers hit their jumps at the same time as they race side-by-side on parallel tracks during the “Speed & Style” competition at the 2024 finale of the Crankworx World Tour, held in Whistler, B.C.
Dome Glacier, on the Icefields Parkway in Banff National Park, Alta., is constantly shifting, creating new features each year. This icy archway had only been a small opening the previous year and is unlikely to remain intact this year as the glacier shifts.
Highliner Mat Bolduc enjoys the first sunrise on a naturally-rigged highline named “Naked Fainting Goat.” The highline was naturally secured (without bolts) on Goat Ridge in Squamish, B.C., and was “more raw and visceral than any highline we had been on before,” says Situ.
As the morning sun bathes this valley in the Drumheller Badlands, Alta., a lone couple hikes a trail through a landscape shaped by time.
The late afternoon sun paints the sky a moody apricot between the looming silhouettes of two condo towers in Etobicoke, Toronto. From Butterfly Park, the photographer used a super-telephoto lens to focus on the contrast between light and shadow.
A storm brews over the Kluane Ranges in Kluane National Park and Reserve, Yukon, as the sun illuminates the Kaskawulsh River valley in gold.
Trees cast their long cold shadows onto the expanse of a frozen lake near Tumbler Ridge, B.C.
A tornado-warned storm swirls like a cinnamon bun over the prairies of Avonlea, Sask. The sculpted cloud above the abandoned building is the rain-free updraft area, while a microburst dumps rain and hail on the right-hand side.
The Tsuchinshan-ATLAS comet streaks over the Bay of Fundy at Burntcoat Head Park, N.S., during low tide in October 2024. The last peoples to see this comet, which has an 80,000-year orbit, with the naked eye would have been the Neanderthals.
The northern lights dance over Vermillion Lakes in Banff National Park, Alta., as Mount Rundle stands majestic, illuminated in an eerie green glow.
Two red fox kits, tumbling around in the dirt of Bonavista, N.L., pause their play to glance at the photographer in the soft morning light. Fox kits are born in the spring and after nine weeks are old enough to hunt with their parents.
It took 40 minutes and three tanks of air for the photographer to reach this giant Pacific octopus, which laid her eggs in early June in Whytecliff Marine Protected Area, B.C. After laying their eggs, octopus mothers stay in their dens, protecting their young. Eventually, they stop eating, and are often dead by the time the eggs hatch.
These Atlantic puffins take a break from hunting for fish to have a sunset social near Elliston, N.L.
Wildlife
Canadian Geographic is pleased to honour 16 photographers for their outstanding images of Canadian wildlife
Wildlife
Canadian Geographic is pleased to honour 14 photographers for their outstanding images of Canadian wildlife
Wildlife
Canadian Geographic is pleased to honour 15 photographers for their outstanding images of Canadian wildlife
People & Culture
The best of the best images of Canadian wildlife from the annual competition hosted by Canadian Geographic in partnership with the Canadian Museum of Nature