Close-up Photographer of the Year: Take a tiny peek at these breathtaking winning images

Celebrating the teeny tiny details most people overlook, the Close-up Photographer of the Year (CUPOTY) competition, devoted to macro and micro photography, has selected this year’s winners from nearly 12,000 entries from 67 countries.

Established in 2018 by photojournalists Tracy and Dan Calder, the Close-up Photographer of the Year is an annual competition made in collaboration with Affinity Photo. 

Photographers competed in the following 11 categories: Animals, Insects, Butterflies & Dragonflies, Invertebrate Portrait, Underwater, Plants, Fungi & Slime Moulds, Intimate Landscape, Human Made, Micro (for images created using a microscope) and Young Close-up Photographer of the Year (for entrants aged 17 or under.)

Hungarian photographer Csaba Daróczi has been awarded the title of Close-up Photographer of the Year for his mesmerising shot of a Eurasian nuthatch bird in flight, taken from within the confines of a hollowed-out tree stump. 

Below are all the winning entries from this years competition:

(Animals 1st Place & Overall Winner)

(Butterflies & Dragonflies 1st Place)

(Insects 1st Place)

(Intimate Landscape 1st Place)

(Micro 1st Place)

(Plants 1st Place)

(Underwater 1st Place)

(Human Made 1st Place)

(Fungi & Slime Moulds 1st Place)