Jan Wieczorek’s Urban beavers won first place in the 2026 Rewilding Europe Award, a special category in the German Society for Nature Photography’s European Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. Made at night in 2025, the photograph places two beavers appearing nose-to-nose in a misty wetland beside building development in Olsztyn, Poland. Its defining choice is to keep the city in the frame rather than isolate the animals from it.
What the photograph shows
The scene is on a river running through Olsztyn between lakes Krzywe and Kortowskie. In the shallow wetland, two beavers appear nose-to-nose; behind them, mist softens the urban setting, including nearby development. The image does not establish what the animals are doing or intending.
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GDT says beavers have inhabited one of the city’s rivers for many years. Roads and railway crossings pass through their territory, and apartment blocks are being built close by. The society’s caption also says the animals are thriving with support from local residents and city authorities.
In that same location-specific caption, GDT credits the beavers with maintaining dams, helping restore water balance, boosting biodiversity, and accelerating natural self-purification of the watercourse. Those are the organizer’s descriptions of this site, not quantified effects or universal measurements.
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How Wieczorek composed the urban night scene
The frame balances a wildlife encounter with evidence of the city around it. Digital Camera World describes the composition as wide, low, and close: the beavers occupy the foreground, while the urban background remains visible. A tighter animal portrait could have emphasized the subjects alone, but it would have omitted the relationship between wetland and development that gives this image its setting.
Wieczorek said he wanted that context to be part of the story: “The story behind the photograph shows that nature doesn’t always exist somewhere far away. It can thrive right next to our homes, beneath our bridges, and in the centres of our cities. By framing the housing development alongside the wetland created by the beavers, I wanted to show that it is possible for humans and wildlife to share space.”
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The image is monochrome. Digital Camera World interprets that choice as a way to avoid competing night colors from orange streetlights, cool skylight, and foreground lighting, so the mist reads as a soft, glowing background. That is the publication’s reading of the picture, not a stated explanation from Wieczorek.
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1Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches2Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems3Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteThe documented camera setup
GDT’s caption lists the equipment and settings Wieczorek used. It names a lens range and aperture, but not the exact lens variant; it also does not identify the infrared sensor model.
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| Item | What the GDT caption specifies |
|---|---|
| Camera | Sony Alpha 7R III |
| Lens | 16–35 mm f/4; exact variant not stated |
| Sensitivity | ISO 1600 |
| Support | Tripod |
| Triggering or detection | Infrared sensor; model not stated |
The caption does not give a shutter speed, focus method, exposure duration, or details of how the infrared sensor was positioned. Those omissions matter: the listed kit describes the documented setup, but it is not enough to reconstruct every step or claim that the same settings will work for another night scene.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Why the image won
The prize is the 2026 Rewilding Europe Award, a special category within GDT’s European Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, organized with Rewilding Europe. Judge Viktoria Pezzei connected the winning and commended images to the wider theme: “The winning and commended images capture the essence of how humans and wildlife can live side by side. Photography like this translates the complex relationships between humans and wildlife, ultimately helping us understand them better.”
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The award result had been announced before the ceremony scheduled for October 23, 2026. The recognition fits the photograph’s central tension: a nocturnal wetland and beavers sharing a landscape with roads, rail crossings, and new housing.
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