Some wildlife shots are luck. This one was arithmetic — three years of attempts and more than 200 hours of watching a single bird until it finally did the thing it was supposed to do in front of a lens. Maksym Breus, 17, photographed a hobby with its talons out, skimming the water surface as it chased a dragonfly, and that frame beat more than 1,200 other entries to win the overall prize in Norfolk Wildlife Trust’s 2026 Nature Photography Competition.
The hobby is a small, absurdly fast falcon that hunts dragonflies on the wing, which makes the whole sequence a nightmare for a photographer: unpredictable, low over water, and over in a fraction of a second. Breus shot it at Redgrave and Lopham Fen on the Norfolk border.
The kit behind the shot is refreshingly ordinary — no exotic super-telephoto, just a first-generation full-frame mirrorless body and a consumer zoom, pushed hard:
- Body: Canon EOS R
- Lens: Sigma 150-600mm f/5-6.3 DG OS HSM | C
- Settings: 1/6400sec, f/6.3, ISO 1250
That shutter speed is the tell. At 1/6400sec on a variable-aperture zoom wide open, ISO 1250 is what you pay to freeze wingtips and a dragonfly mid-escape. Patience did the rest.
“For three years I’ve attempted to capture a legendary shot of a hobby chasing a dragonfly,” Breus said in a press release. “After more than 200 hours spent observing, the delight of achieving my dream shot was absolutely indescribable!”
“For me, wildlife photography was never just about showing an animal; I want to show people the behaviour, story, and fleeting moments that make each encounter special,” he added.
The competition ran on entries submitted during June and July 2026, covering Norfolk’s wildlife, landscapes and plants. Twelve images were picked for the trust’s 2027 calendar, and the overall winner was decided by a public vote at the end of August 2026.
Two other categories were also judged. Tia Pardon, 16, took the Young Person prize for a little egret backlit by the sun at NWT Hickling Broad. Clifford Wicker won the Mobile Phone category with a banded demoiselle damselfly photographed at Ingoldisthorpe Water Recycling Centre — proof that a phone in the right place still beats a big lens in the wrong one.
Breus receives a prize donated by competition sponsor ZEISS; the Young Person and Mobile Phone winners get gift vouchers from John Lewis Norwich.
The 2027 calendar goes on sale online and at Norfolk Wildlife Trust visitor centres — Hickling Broad, Holme Dunes and Cley Marshes — from late September 2026. A free exhibition of the winning and highly commended images runs at NWT Cley Marshes throughout October 2026.
