Updated Dec 21, 2020 · 07:48 am A leopard pounces on a Malabar giant squirrel at the Bandipur Tiger Reserve in Karnataka. The photo won the third prize at the Sanctuary Wildlife Photography Awards 2020. | Priyanka Rahut Mitra
The nonprofit Sanctuary Nature Foundation, which publishes wildlife and photography magazine
Sanctuary Asia, presented the Sanctuary Wildlife Photography Awards at a virtual ceremony on Saturday.
The first prize went to photographer Pratik Uday Pradhan for capturing a crane fly on a thin twig in Matheran, a hill station near Mumbai. “In the dark of night, Pratik Pradhan watches this little dancer under the steady beam of a torchlight,” the citation for the photograph read. “He adjusts the shutter speed of his camera, and clicks. The cranefly is captured; its body still, its legs a blur of spectral blue waves reminiscent of the Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights.”