Frozen patience: Dubai photographer’s image of a penguin family wins top global honour

Dubai: For most people, Antarctica is a frozen wilderness — remote, inhospitable, and unforgiving. But for wildlife photographer and Dubai-resident Thomas Vijayan, it is a place of wonder, patience, and profound beauty.

His award-winning image of a penguin family, captured in the heart of the Antarctic, has just earned him the prestigious Nature’s Best Photography Award 2025.

The story behind the frame is as remarkable as the photograph itself.

“I’ve been travelling to some of the most remote corners of the planet,” says Vijayan. “Sometimes I spend weeks in small bunkers with basic food supplies and a portable toilet.”

Capturing a moment of intimacy among penguins is far from simple. “They live in massive colonies, and isolating a single family takes time, patience, and luck. Penguin parents take turns feeding their chicks, sometimes disappearing for days at sea. I spent hours lying flat on the ice, waiting for that perfect moment.”

That moment finally arrived when the second parent returned to its chick — a perfect symmetry unfolding before his lens. “It looked like a painting,” Vijayan recalls. “I’ve taken over 100,000 penguin shots, but this was my dream frame.”

Vijayan says Antarctica has been his favourite destination since his first expedition there in 2016. He has returned four times since — first arriving by ship, and later by plane. “Each journey demands meticulous planning and physical endurance. The flights are unpredictable, and everything depends on the weather. What starts as a week-long expedition can easily turn into a month if the skies close in.”

Once on the ice, life is stripped to essentials. “We pitch our tents directly on sea ice — small ones, just about three feet tall — because the winds can blow away anything larger. Changing seven layers of clothing inside that tiny space is a challenge of its own,” he says.

Strict environmental rules mean no waste can be left behind. “Even human waste must be carried back by the expedition team,” he explains. “Antarctica belongs to no one, and that makes it everyone’s responsibility to protect.”

But amid the hardship comes magic. “When you see penguins, you forget the pain, the cold, the hunger — everything,” he says. “They’re simply adorable.”

This time, he was not alone. His younger daughter, Jennifer, joined him on the 21-day expedition — her first encounter with the world’s most pristine wilderness. “She managed the challenges beautifully,” he says proudly. “Sharing that experience with her made this journey even more special.”

For Thomas Vijayan, the photograph is more than an image — it is the story of patience, perseverance, and the quiet bond between parent and child, both human and penguin, on the edge of the world.

Vijayan is no stranger to awards. He uses photographs to convey a wider story – of habitat being destroyed, of climate change taking a toll on wildlife and of how humans are encroaching into territory that does not belong to them.

One of his most famous pictures is that of an orangutan climbing a tree in Indonesia, a photograph that won him the first place in the Wildlife category at the 6th edition of Xposure International Photography Exhibition in Sharjah.

To capture this photograph, Vijayan perched himself on top of a tree and waited for the opportune moment with an 8-14 fisheye lens. What resulted was an orangutan staring straight into the camera and a picture entitled “The World Is Going Upside Down.”

“I am happy to play my part in protecting the environment,” Vijayan says. “When this picture won the top prize, the media covered it well, ensuring that the forest was not destroyed for personal gains.”

“One of my hard-earned victories with the camera was shooting the Amur Leopard – one of the rarest cats in the world. With just a few in the wild, you have to spend years trying to spot one. I finally found one on the border between Russia and China.”