Some news made my day last week, and I could not wait to share it with you.
My photo of two boxing Kangaroo Island kangaroos at sunset has been shortlisted for the grand prize in the 2025 Pangolin Photo Challenge, in the “Out of Africa” category.
Yes — Australian kangaroos in an “Out of Africa” category. I love that. Pangolin is a safari company based in Africa, and the “Out of Africa” category is precisely for wildlife from the rest of the world. It is their way of saying that wild and beautiful exists everywhere, not only on the savanna. I could not agree more.
I took this photo on Kangaroo Island, South Australia, during the golden hour just before sunset. The light that evening was extraordinary — thick and amber, turning everything it touched into fire. Two young males were sparring in the long dry grass, completely absorbed in each other, and I remember thinking: do not move, do not breathe, just let it happen.The backlight caught the fine fur along their silhouettes and the dust rising from the ground, and for a few seconds the whole scene became something closer to a painting than a photograph. This is one of my favourite images from that trip, and honestly, one of my favourites ever.
The kangaroos are Kangaroo Island kangaroos (Macropus fuliginosus fuliginosus), a subspecies of the Western Grey Kangaroo found only on Kangaroo Island. Centuries of isolation from the mainland have made them distinctly their own: shorter, darker, with a richness of fur that the mainland populations do not have. And considerably cuter, in my entirely unbiased opinion.
The Pangolin Photo Challenge draws entries from photographers around the world, and the standard is genuinely high. To be shortlisted for the grand prize is both humbling and quietly thrilling — the kind of news you read twice before you believe it.
Thank you to everyone who has followed this journey and supported my work. It means more than I can say. I hope this photo does what I always hope my wildlife images will do: make you stop for a moment, look at these animals, and feel something worth holding onto.
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