Nine-Year-Old Indian Girl Wins Wildlife Photography Award for Peahen Image

A 9-year-old from Faridabad turned a family morning walk at Keoladeo National Park into a global wildlife photography moment, and the image that did it was almost disarmingly simple. Shreyovi Mehta finished runner-up in the 10 Years and Under category of the 60th Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition with In the Spotlight, a frame of two Indian peahens silhouetted beneath a canopy of trees in Bharatpur, Rajasthan.

The competition, run by the Natural History Museum in London, drew nearly 60,000 entries from participants in 117 countries and territories, which makes Mehta’s result stand out even more sharply. Her image rose through a field packed with technical power and rare subjects, yet the winning formula here was clarity: a strong silhouette, a recognizable national bird, and a composition that lets the peahens own the frame.

What makes the photograph useful to photographers is how little it appears to need. Mehta made the picture during a walk with her parents, using her father’s camera, and the scene depended more on timing and instinct than on elaborate setup. In a field where wildlife work can easily become about long lenses, exotic action, and heavy post-processing, In the Spotlight shows the value of waiting for a clean subject and letting shape and light do the work.

Kathy Moran, chair of the judging panel, said the competition highlights species diversity, a range of behavior, and conservation issues, and Mehta’s image fits that brief with unusual precision. The peahens are instantly legible, the habitat is clear, and the species choice carries local resonance in India. That combination helped the photograph travel beyond a children’s category and into broader conversation about what strong wildlife images look like.

Shreyovi Mehta, a Class 5 student at Shiv Nadar School Faridabad, was also described by her school as the youngest Indian to be recognized in the competition. She was due to receive a medal at the award ceremony at the Natural History Museum in London on October 8, 2024. Mehta said she was proud that her image of India’s national bird received recognition on the world’s biggest stage for wildlife photography, and said she hoped to keep practicing so that the tiger could one day receive similar recognition.

The reaction online followed quickly, with praise centering on the composition and the surprise of seeing such a polished wildlife frame from a child using her father’s camera. For adult photographers, that may be the real lesson: the image did not win because it was overloaded with technique, but because it knew exactly what the subject was and delivered it with restraint.