13 gorgeous black-and-white images of the animal kingdom

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. While our world is filled with brilliant colors, seeing it in monochrome can be striking. The 2025 Nature Photography Contest celebrates the “enduring power of black and white photography” and its ability “to deepen our connection with the natural world,” according to a press release. This year’s contest welcomed submissions from 82 countries and the winners include stunning and intimate photographs of wildlife, all in black and white. “Emperors”Emperor penguin family together after feeding the chick.Credit: Risto Raunio / Exposure One Awards – 2025 Nature Photography Contest Photographer Lidija Novković earned top honors in the Professional category for a powerful image of a horse (seen below). Janet Gustin won the Non-Professional category for a playful photo of a fox kit nipping at its mother. Visit Exposure One for a full gallery of the honorees. (Click to expand images to full screen.) “Zacudno”Credit: Lidija Novković / Exposure One Awards – 2025 Nature Photography Contest “Ouch!”While siblings nurse below, one kit fox pup demands attention the only way he knows how – by gently biting mom’s face. The tender chaos of motherhood captured in a single frame. Even in the wild, kids compete for affection, and sometimes getting noticed means being a little bit bold.Credit: Janet Gustin / Exposure One Awards – 2025 Nature Photography Contest “A Sea of Horns”I took this photo on my iPhone as I was helping my sister move goats around the yards….the dust billowed up so much one could hardly see!Credit: Rachael Ryan / Exposure One Awards – 2025 Nature Photography Contest “The Dive”Credit: Fabi Fregonesi / Exposure One Awards – 2025 Nature Photography Contest “Deadly Fluff”Thick fur hides claws and power. The bear’s paws show both strength and comfort, made to endure the endless winter.Credit: Wouter Van Hofwegen / Exposure One Awards – 2025 Nature Photography Contest “Ghost of the Savannah”In the moonlit stillness of Kenya’s Shompole wilderness, a hyena emerges from the darkness – its silhouette etched in dust and backlight. The photograph captures the raw, nocturnal spirit of the African savannah, where every sound and shadow tells a story of survival.Credit: Caesar Sengupta / Exposure One Awards – 2025 Nature Photography Contest “Holy Waters”The iconic Christ of the Abyss statue lies in ~30′ of water off Key Largo. For decades, divers scrubbed it clean, but several years back, that became illegal, and set out for this shoot after several years of coral growth – not too much, not too little.Credit: Chris Gug / Exposure One Awards – 2025 Nature Photography Contest “The Sardine Run”The sardine run in Mexico is a feeding frenzy, sea lions, striped marlins, whales and the list goes on and on. The ocean truly alive.Credit: Frederico Cerdeira / Exposure One Awards – 2025 Nature Photography Contest “Flight Lines”Photographed above Lake Magadi, flamingos lift off, their bodies forming loose diagonals across dark water. In flight, the flock becomes a study in rhythm—wings catching light in brief, alternating intervals crossing the frame. Movement becomes pattern, rendered in stark contrast from the air.Credit: Holly Kirkland / Exposure One Awards – 2025 Nature Photography Contest “Under a Veil of Algae”Credit: Jana Hejzlarova / Exposure One Awards – 2025 Nature Photography Contest “Naturally Unfolding”At the foot of Wyoming’s Tetons the waning day brings a cast of characters together to mingle for a moment of refreshingly untouched nature.Credit: Michael Paul / Exposure One Awards – 2025 Nature Photography Contest 2025 PopSci Best of What’s New The 50 most important innovations of the year