A Frog, a Dragonfly and 250 Photos: NANPA's 2027 Showcase Winners

A Texas photographer's split-second image of a leopard frog snatching a dragonfly mid-air has taken Best in Show at the North American Nature Photography Association's 2027 Showcase, the top honor in a competition that recognized 250 works in total.

Cissy Beasley's winning frame — which also won the Macro / Micro / All Other category — freezes a frog at the exact moment of capture, water droplets hanging in the air around it. She didn't stumble onto it, either.

"As we sat by a country pond, we watched a springy and ambitious Leopard Frog try his luck and skill at leaping up to snatch dragonflies from a perch or mid-air…over and over," Beasley says. "Finally, he scored, securing an Eastern Pondhawk with his long, sticky tongue."

Patience rewarded, then. That's roughly one keepable frame out of dozens of failed leaps.

Who won what in the 2027 Showcase?

The Showcase handed out honors across eight categories, with winners, runners-up and Judges' Choice selections published alongside Top 100 and Top 250 galleries on NANPA's website.

• Birds: Charles Janson, for an action shot of a male Pileated Woodpecker hammering at a dead Ponderosa Pine.
• Mammals: Kevin Lohman, for a backlit clash between two polar bears in Churchill, Manitoba — a silhouette that earned top marks.
• 'Scapes: John Benford, for a nighttime photograph of Castle Geyser in Yellowstone National Park.
• Macro / Micro / All Other: Beasley, doubling up on her Best in Show win.
• Conservation: Graham Gerdeman.
• Altered Reality: Dave Hattori.
• Comedy / Humor: Kevin Lohman, again.
• Series: Parham Pourahmad.

What does the Conservation winner actually show?

This is where the Showcase turns somber. Gerdeman's winning photograph depicts a dead Great Horned Owl lying face down in a puddle at a city cemetery in Nashville, Tennessee. It was the second Great Horned Owl found dead in that state at the site. No necropsy was performed, despite the cemetery's proximity to industrial sites.

The category, as NANPA presents it, is a mixed bag — some honored images offer reasons for hope. This one is an indictment. A conservation prize going to a photograph of an unexplained death, uninvestigated next to industry, says something about the state of things that no cheerful landscape could.

How much editing is too much?

The Altered Reality category exists to answer that question, and this year's answers run wide. Hattori's winning image is heavily edited in Photoshop to create artistic special effects — no pretense of documentary restraint. The first runner-up is more methodical: a composite of 139 separate photographs showing the consistent flight patterns of Gannets in Norway. Call it statistics rendered as spectacle.

Can one photographer win twice?

Yes, and Lohman nearly proves it. Alongside his Mammals win for the polar bear silhouette, he took the Comedy / Humor category with a photograph of a seven-week-old Great Horned Owl fledgling looking genuinely shocked as a gray squirrel jumped at it. The owl fell off its perch, Lohman reports, but was unharmed.

The Showcase isn't strictly a comedy competition in the vein of the Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards, but the laughs are clearly welcome.

What is the Series category?

Unique among the eight categories, Series asks for seven photographs on a single topic rather than one standalone image. Pourahmad's winning sequence documents how coyotes have adapted to urban lifestyles and habitats in the San Francisco Bay Area — a nature story that takes place, pointedly, inside cities rather than beyond them. His seven frames join seven more from the category's three other winners in the full gallery.

Where can you see the rest?

Beyond the category winners, the 2027 judges recognized 250 works across the Top 100 and Top 250 galleries, all viewable on NANPA's website. Every photographer is credited in the image captions.

The Showcase continues to reward the long game — repeated attempts at a pond, 139 exposures of the same sky, seven frames of one urban predator — and next year's edition will tell whether the Conservation category delivers hope or another casualty.