Dilmah Awards LKR 3 Million to Winners of Photo Competition

This article was contributed by Dilmah.

Highlighting the Urgency of Conservation through Photography

Dilmah Tea celebrated the Top 70 finalists, including 37 award winners, in its unique photography competition and exhibition ‘One Earth: Unveiling Sri Lanka’s Biodiversity’, which went beyond traditional wildlife photography to highlight often overlooked dimensions of biodiversity.

This was the first time Dilmah hosted a photo competition of this nature, building on the success of its earlier initiative this year, Flutter Shutter, Sri Lanka’s first-ever butterfly photography competition. Dilmah plans to make One Earth an annual event, using visual storytelling as a powerful medium to inspire conservation and deepen appreciation for Sri Lanka’s extraordinary biodiversity.

Inviting both established and aspiring photographers through Open and School categories, One Earth inspired participants to move beyond picturesque jungle scenes and reveal the fragility, urgency, and resilience of nature in backyards, waterways, and nightscapes – resulting in a powerful collection of images carrying compelling conservation messages.

Launched in June, the competition received around 400 submissions. Judging was conducted anonymously, with photographers identified only by a code to ensure fairness. The distinguished panel of judges, whose wildlife photography has been featured internationally, included wildlife photographer Luxshman Nadaraja, conservation photographer Sankha Wanniatchi, and wildlife photographer Ravisara Jayamanna.

The judges praised the variety of species represented from reptiles and amphibians to insects, birds and mammals, and expressed excitement at the level of interest from students, particularly their choice to highlight lesser-known species such as reptiles.

“Photographing rare herpetofauna species can play a vital role in conservation efforts,” said Ravisara Jayamanna.

The awards ceremony was held at Genesis by Dilmah – Centre for a Sustainable Future in September alongside the public exhibition of the top 70 photographs. Thirty-seven winners were recognized and awarded a collective LKR 3 million to support their photographic journeys, with first, second, and third places presented in each category, alongside seven special mentions and two People’s Choice awards.

The People’s Choice was selected through online voting where the winners garnered over 3,500 votes each from a total of 16,954 votes.

The winning entries featured striking and thought-provoking images. The image titled “Crime Scene” captured what first appears to be degraded forest land, but on closer look reveals the distant shape of a dead elephant and, just metres away, the plastic waste dump that caused its death. Another powerful image, “A Polluted Hunt,” showed a Brahminy Kite swooping into Bolgoda Lake to catch a fish, only to release it after discovering it was trapped in plastic.

The exhibition also highlighted often-overlooked species such as fungi, caterpillars, and ants. One photograph featuring a mushroom growing in the photographer’s backyard, submitted almost by chance, won first place in the ‘Biodiversity in the Backyard’ category, showing that conservation stories can emerge from even the smallest and most ordinary moments.

In the school category, one student captured a beetle on a windowpane, encouraging a shift from focusing solely on charismatic species to appreciating everyday biodiversity.

“Appreciate nature in its entirety as an ecosystem. There’s no need to rush behind only charismatic species. Train yourself to see beauty in everything, and you will be the greatest beneficiary,” said Luxshman Nadaraja at the awards ceremony.

Click here to view the Top 70 and winners of One Earth: Revealing Sri Lanka’s Biodiversity.