It's that time of the year again. We've got our hands on the shortlisted pictures from the 2024 Close-up Photographer of the Year competition, so you can feast your eyes on a whole new collection of natural wonders from around the world.
This is the 6th edition of the annual competition dedicated to highlighting the best in close-up, macro, and micro photography. The 25 judges combed through 11,681 photographs across 11 categories, in a bid to award one winner a £2,500 ($3,245) cash top prize and a trophy.
Flipping through this year's shortlist, I was blown away by the technical skills, artistic compositions and otherworldly subjects on display all at once. We've curated a selection of fascinating images from nine categories of photographs of natural marvels, including animals, insects, arachnids, and invertebrates. You can see a couple below, but can find them all in our gallery.
The Top 100 pictures and winners will be selected in January 2025. Check out last year's winners here, and find the competition website here.
And of course there's more where that came from. Feed your micro photography fix with the winning entries from this year's Nikon Small World competition that were announced earlier this month.