To photograph one of rarest creatures on Earth you have to be incredibly skilled and remarkably lucky.
But Sergey Gorshkov is clearly both – as demonstrated by his stunning picture of a Siberian, or Amur, tiger deep in the forests of Russia’s Far East.
The image has just won him the title of Wildlife Photographer of the Year.
The female tiger is seen embracing a tree, rubbing herself up against the bark to leave her scent and mark territory in Leopard National Park.
“The lighting, the colours, the texture – it’s like an oil painting,” says WPY chair of judges Roz Kidman-Cox.