From more than 3,000 entries, Queensland’s Jason Keeler has won the overall title of Photographer of the Year for 2025, for his visceral Landscape category-winning series Reduction Burn.
The win caps a hugely successful 2025 for the New Zealand-born photographer, who captured the winning series south of Townsville.
Photographer of the Year and Landscape category, Winner, Jason Keeler, Reduction burn.
After stumbling upon the reduction burn while driving home one evening, he grabbed his camera and set out to document it not just in a traditional landscape photography way, but with a real photojournalistic approach.
“After more than three hours, a few hundred shots, and over half a kilometre from where I started, I headed home excited, having captured what I thought was a wonderful series of pictures," he says.
For our judges, the series showcased everything that makes a great series truly powerful.
“Jason brought together many of the skills we would apply to professional images,” said judge Anthony McKee. “The photographs inspire a level of wariness in us, but they manage to capture a mysterious beauty at the same time.”
Photographer of the Year, now in its 13th year, challenges photographers in the major categories to shoot four images that work together as a cohesive series. It had a prize pool valued at more than $28,000.
For 2025, images came from both Australia and New Zealand, with work captured on digital, film and smartphones vying for honours.
The latest issue of Australian Photography (Photographer of the Year 2025-26 edition) is out now on Zinio and soon in print, and presents a stunning visual record of the best entries across the nine categories in the competition.
The cover of the Photographer of the Year issue of Australian Photography, captured by Animal and Nature category Runner-up, Neil Kendall.
A selection of our winners and runners-up in the competition will now be exhibited at Ted's World of Imaging in Sydney in early 2026 – keep an eye on our website for more information about the exhibition opening.
We’re hugely grateful to our amazing major sponsor Ted’s Cameras, and supporting sponsors Western Digital, Ilford, Photobookshop, Gigabyte, Aorus, Retouch4Me, Kudos cameras, Billingham, The Brownbill Effect, Jobo and Cura.
To our judges tasked with choosing their favourite images, we hugely appreciate your work in this most challenging of tasks. A huge thanks to the amazing Alex Cearns OAM, Helen Whittle, Will Patino, Douwe Dijkstra, Drew Hopper, Mandarine Montgomery, Ann and Steve Toon, Anthony McKee, Lisa Michele Burns, Doug Gimesy, Sally Brownbill, Tim Levy, and Petra Leary.
And finally, and most importantly, to all our entrants – thank you. Photographer of the Year has showcased the best amateur photography for nearly 15 years thanks to the support of photographers like you.
For us at Australian Photography, the greatest joy in running the competition comes from giving you a platform to promote your work, and also seeing where our winners go next – so many have used the competition as a stepping stone to bigger and better things.
We’ll be back again for the 2026 edition of the competition in May. We can’t wait to see what you come up with.
Landscape category, Runner-up
Landscape category, Runner-up, Paul Collis, Uluru in monochrome. Paul's series was captured in May 2025 on his first visit to the iconic site. “I challenged myself to move beyond the familiar reds, and capture something quieter: Uluru’s strength and stillness,” he explains.
People category: Winner
People category, Winner, Lodi Pertovt, The faces of Iraq. Based on the Gold Coast, Lodi Pertovt is a travel and portrait photographer who also teaches English Literature and Social Studies. He describes his powerful People category-winning series as deeply personal. “Each photo captures small but significant details that tell the story of people who risk being forgotten or misunderstood,” he says.
People category: Runner-up
People category, Runner-up, Brett Ferguson, The performer in red. Created with model Evana De Lune, Brett's series explores the contrast between two sides of a single identity. One is the burlesque performer, full of confidence, and captivating the audience with a magnetic stage presence. The other is the private individual who, away from the spotlight, finds comfort in quiet moments and solitude.
Animal and Nature category: Winner
Animal and Nature category, Winner, John Peters, Jumpers of Aus. For his category-winning series Jumpers of Aus, John Peters combined backgrounds taken with Bunnings paint sample cards and his signature front-on symmetrical style, which he describes as the most difficult shot type to achieve. He says he’ll often spend hours with a single jumper to get the shot he is looking for.
Animal and Nature category: Runner-up
Animal and Nature category, Runner-up, Neil Kendall, Drinks after dark. Neil's series was captured on a trip to Kenya’s Shompole Wilderness Lodge. “The lodge has an amazing night hide at a waterhole,” he explains. “The wildlife could come and go freely, but the chance to photograph large wild mammals less than 10 metres away, at eye level, with controlled lighting, was irresistible.”
Travel category: Winner
Travel category, Winner, Fiona Bowring, Accidental mirrors. Canberra-based photographer Fiona Bowring’s quirky series Accidental Mirrors is the result of a bunch of visits to galleries in Australia and the UK. The series includes a self-portrait taken with the help of a gallery bench and a self-timer.
Travel category: Runner-up
Travel category, Runner-up, Aditya Joshi, Echoes of the eternal. “After living abroad for over a decade, this series began as a journey through three cities in India – Varanasi, Kolkata, and the temporary city of Maha Kumbh in Prayagraj – but it quickly became something more,” he says.
Black and White category: Winner
Black and White category, Winner, Andrew Tan, Under Cover. Based in Melbourne, Andrew Tan’s winning Black and White series was captured during a photo walk in the city on a wet, wintery June day. “The assignment was ‘umbrellas’, but the low-light conditions inspired me to take a different approach,” he says. Using a slow shutter speed of around one second, made possible by the dark skies, he aimed to capture the movement and energy of umbrellas navigating the rain-soaked streets.
Black and White category: Runner-up
Black and White category, Runner-up, Cassandra McMahon, Parts of a dog. Cassandra's series is part of a larger series exploring the ethics of dog breeds and how our relationships with these animals are shaped. At the same time, she says she chose black and white to focus on how forms are highlighted and textures emphasised.
Aerial category: Winner
Aerial category, Winner, Luke Mackenzie, Lençóis Maranhenses. For his Aerial category-winning series, Luke flew above the UNESCO-listed national park in northern Brazil, a landscape he says was unlike anything he had seen before. Although partly a desert environment, the valleys between the dunes fill with freshwater lagoons during the rainy season, held in place by the impermeable rock beneath.
Aerial category: Runner-up
Aerial category, Runner-up, Rachel Jane Panekoek, Southwest textures. Rather than entering four images that tie together visually, Rachel says she sought to showcase four completely different landscapes, while still keeping them tied together through the connection of sharing the same region in south Western Australia. Her series includes images of Cranbrook Pink Lake, Lake Clifton Thrombolites, Greens Pool and Dwellingup Forest – providing viewers with a mini tour of the region from above.
Creative category: Winner
Creative category, Winner, Sue Joy, Dancing in water. Submerged floral photography comes with many considerations, from equipment and lighting to the mediums used and all the small details in between. “The choice of flowers is also important, as some don’t work as well as others,” Sue explains. “I grew the flowers featured in this image specifically for the project. Be prepared for a few failed attempts, but when you finally capture an image you’re truly happy with, every bit of effort is worthwhile.”
Creative category: Runner-up
Creative category, Runner-up, Melanie Warnaar, Towering white trunks. Melanie turned her lens to the vibrant transformation of the once-contaminated Urunga Wetlands, now a thriving wildlife habitat, for her shot. “I was drawn to the slender paperbark trunks and their reflections dancing among green lilies during the tranquil blue hour,” she says. “I experimented with intentional camera movement to convey what I felt: the harmony of renewal and nature’s resilience."
Single Shot category: Winner
Single Shot category, Winner, Michael McSorley, AK. Michael describes his winning work as drawing inspiration from masters like Max Dupain, and there are echoes of his iconic work Sunbaker in his image AK, captured on Ilford HP5 Plus film.
Single Shot category: Runner-up
Single Shot category, Runner-up, Kathy Wallace, Going up. Going Up was captured during a Museums of History NSW tour of the new 1 Elizabeth building in Sydney. “On the tour, the lift system was highlighted for its design, bringing more light into the centre of the building," explains Kathy. "It seemed futuristic as the lifts whizzed up and down, and I was mesmerised. Despite the reflective glass, I was able to get close and take this image. The graphic nature of the lines really drew my eye, and seeing people exiting one of the lift ‘capsules’ brought the image to life.”
Junior category: Winner
Junior category, Winner, Aaryan Dhakal, Silent grace. 17-year-old Aaryan Dhakal's category-winning image, Silent Grace was inspired by an older pelican portrait that he felt “never quite felt complete”. “I was drawn to the balance of fragility and poise in these birds, but the challenge was in the light. I waited for that fleeting moment when the sun revealed every texture in the feathers. Among all the frames I captured, this one stood apart,” he says.
Junior category: Runner-up
Junior category, Runner-up, William Haddrill, Sword fight. Fifteen-year-old Western Australian photographer William Haddrill first discovered his passion when he picked up his grandfather’s camera.“I’ve always been interested in birds and wildlife, but I fell in love with photographing them and saved up to buy my own camera,” he says.
