Judges
The Australian Native Bee Association Committee is pleased to introduce the judging panel for the conference photo competition! This is a great opportunity to get your photos in front of some of Australia’s best award-winning nature photographers.
Charles Davis
Charles has been a nature photographer for over a decade and primarily works to capture Australian wildlife in the Snowy Mountains. Charles’ photography depicts this unique environment in a way that is seldom seen and often brings an other-worldly feeling to this harsh and stunning environment. He has also worked extensively across the industry including with the BBC, ABC, and National Geographic. He is a major multi-award winning photographer, including taking first in categories of the Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year Award across multiple years. We are really pleased and honoured that Charles has agreed to judge the competition.
Jannico Kelk
Jannico has also been photographing Australia’s wildlife for well over a decade and is trained as an ecologist. He has a particular focus on conservation photography and has worked in very remote parts of Australia capturing intimate images of our wildlife. Jannico’s work paints our wildlife in a unique way that portrays both a sense of calmness while often capturing their movements and secret lives. He has worked with major outlets and organisation including National Geographic, Australian Geographic, Australian Photography Magazine, Arid Recovery, Netflic, and the South Australian Museum. Jannico is also a multi-award winning nature photographer who has an incredible and unique eye. He has won awards in of the Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year Award across multiple years, Wildlife Photographer of the Year, Australian Emerging Photographer of the Year, and more.
James Dorey
James Dorey has been a nature photographer for over a decade and, for most of that time, has specialised on macro photography and Australia’s native bees. He is a trained evolutionary ecologist and Lecturer at the University of Wollongong who works to understand the world’s wild bees and their conservation. James’ work seeks to bring our wild insects to people as landscapes in miniature that are otherwise invisible to the human eye. He hopes to bring people to literally eye-level with these incredible and tiny animals. James has worked in the industry with publications like CSIRO Publishing, Australian Geographic, Wildlife Australia Magazine, and many more news outlets. He is also a multi-award winning photographer having won and placed in the Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year Award across multiple years, Australian Photography Awards, National Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year, and Nikon’s Small World Photomicrography competition.
Australian Native Bee Association - Photography Competition 2026
Welcome to the Australian Native Bee Photography Competition (2026) submission form. The competition is intended to highlight, celebrate, and showcase the diversity of Australia’s native bee species. The competition is free and open to anyone, and the winners will be announced at the end of the Australian Native Bee Conference in Cairns (2nd of August 2026). There are two categories. Firstly, the open category has a first, second, and third place prize. Secondly, the people’s choice has a single prize. The open category will be decided by three judges and the people’s choice will be decided by popular vote during the conference. Prize money is the minimum awarded but might change.
ENTRIES CLOSE: 19th of July 2026
Open category
- 1st place — $250
- 2nd place — $100
- 3rd place — $50
- Honourable mentions may also be awarded for short-listed images –
People’s choice winner — $100
Submission: Please label your files as “Image[1–5]_Firstname_lastName.jpg” so that they can be reliably attributed to you and matched with the captions (captions may also be added to the file metadata as a description). Maximum of five images per entrant.
Note: You should be able to edit this form after your submission.
Competition rules:
- The photograph must feature an Australian native bee.
- The photograph must be the work only of the entrant and they must own the copyright of their photo(s).
- Only MINOR editing of the image is allowed.
We employ the same criteria from the ANZANG photo competition.
- 1. Acceptable adjustments are moderate changes to levels, curves, colour, saturation, contrast, shadow and highlights. Dodging and burning is acceptable. Sharpening, noise reduction, lens perspective correction, luminosity masking techniques and minor cleaning are acceptable.
- 2. Entrants are permitted to use more than one exposure per image, provided the resulting photograph maintains the integrity of the original subject. Focus stacking, multiple exposures and stitched panoramas, taken in exactly the same location at the same time are permitted. Note that all original frames must be provided to the Organiser for the authenticity check should your entry be shortlisted.
- 3. Cropping of any degree is allowed.
- 4. The integrity of the original subject must be maintained. The removal, alteration or relocation of elements within the image is not allowed. This includes but is not limited to animals, plants, people, distractions or blemishes.
- 5. Compositing of different scenes is not allowed. Blur or glow effects are not permitted. Perspective/focal length blending is not permitted. Warping, stretching or other image manipulations are not permitted.
- 6. Any short-listed entrant MUST be able to provide the digital RAW image(s).
- 7. Images must be submitted digitally with file sizes between 0.5 and 5 MB in size.
- 8. There is a maximum of FIVE images allowed per entrant.
- 9. The field for the popular vote will be limited to the best 30–50 images, as determined by the judges.
- 10. The entrants retain their copyright of images, but grant ANBA a license to use the image(s) submitted in direct association with the association only. This might include social media posts and publishing in “The Cross-Pollinator”. Any usage outside of these terms may be discussed between the photographer and an ANBA representative.
The competition will be judged by three professional and award-winning nature photographers, Jannico Kelk, Charles Davis, and James Dorey
