A brilliantly blue image of a New Zealand glacier has won an Aussie photographer a coveted people\u2019s choice Photo of the Year award.<\/p>\n
Stuart Chape took the snap, entitled Glacial Blue, at Lake Pukaki in the mountains of the Aoraki\/Mount Cook National Park.<\/p>\n
It was named the people\u2019s choice in the 2025 Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year awards.<\/p>\n
WA photographer Ross Gudgeon was named the competition\u2019s overall winner with his image Fractal Forest, taken inside a cauliflower coral in Indonesia.<\/p>\n
Mr Chape\u2019s striking landscape highlights the incredible blues found in fine soil particles in water coming from glacial erosion.<\/p>\n
The multi-award-winning NSW photographer said he had planned ahead of time to take the shot while on a holiday in New Zealand.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m interested in patterns formed by the landscape and chartered a plane for it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt snowed just two days before the flight \u2013 something that was a bit unexpected in October, but it added another dimension to the photo. It all added to what I wanted to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
The award-winning images are part of an exhibition of almost 100 competition finalists at the South Australian Museum, which runs until February 1.<\/p>\n
The annual competition, which is owned and run by the museum, last year attracted almost 1900 images from 449 photographers from 18 countries and incorporated 10 categories.<\/p>\n
![\"Stuart](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/0f39155c0d495c5269742a0987585a31f1cee0d6.jpg\")
Camera IconStuart Chape took the snap, entitled Glacial Blue, at Lake Pukaki in the mountains of the Aoraki\/Mount Cook National Park. Credit: Stuart Chape\/Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year\/Stuart Chape\/Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year<\/p>\n
South Australian Museum director Samantha Hamilton said Mr Chape\u2019s landscape was the overwhelming winner of the People\u2019s Choice Award.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just goes to show how different images in the exhibition resonate with different people,\u201d Dr Hamilton said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe photograph is beautiful and the amazing colours obviously created a deep connection for those who saw it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat, of course, is one of our ambitions for the competition – to connect people with nature.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A brilliantly blue image of a New Zealand glacier has won an Aussie photographer a coveted people\u2019s choice…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414669,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[449,458,459,64,63,460,134,1625],"class_list":["post-414668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}