Categories

Choose from 10 categories in CUPOTY 7 (2025) and a Young category for under 18 year-olds.

Images made with a microscope can go into any suitable category except Underwater and Intimate Landscape.

Scroll down or click the category below to find out more.

ANIMALS
INSECTS
INVERTEBRATE PORTRAIT
BUTTERFLIES & DRAGONFLIES
ARACHNIDS
UNDERWATER
PLANTS
FUNGI & SLIME MOULDS
INTIMATE LANDSCAPE
STUDIO ART
YOUNG

If you are 18 or over on the closing date, you may enter as many categories as you like. For example, if you purchase entry for 6 pictures, you may enter 2 in Animals, 3 in Plants and 1 in Fungi.

The same image may be entered into multiple categories, but each category is counted as one entry. (See the FAQ for more information.)

Photographers aged 17 or under on July 13th, 2025 should enter the Young category.

If you’re unsure and would like to check which category your image should go in, please email us a low-res file.

Animals

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Animals

Photographs of any animal, apart from insects, springtails or arachnids, should be entered into this category. Send us your best close-up images of birds, reptiles, amphibians, mammals, fish and molluscs that are not entirely submerged underwater.

Wide close-ups of the animal in its habitat, striking details of larger animals, artistic compositions and interesting behaviour are all possibilities here.

Insects

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Insects

The category for ants, bees, beetles and bugs; caddisflies, cockroaches and crickets; earwigs, fleas and flies; grasshoppers, lacewings and lice; mantids, mayflies and stick insects; termites, thrips, and wasps, to name the main ones. This year, Springtails should also go into this category.

(Butterflies, moths, dragonflies and damselflies should go into Butterflies & Dragonflies. Spiders, ticks and mites should go into the new category of Arachnids.)

You could photograph insects in extreme close-up or framed by their surroundings; with a creative twist or exhibiting interesting behaviour.

For a full list of insects please refer to the A to Z of Insects on The Amateur Entomologists' Society website.

Invertebrate Portrait

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Invertebrate Portrait

This category is designed to show the natural beauty of invertebrates and the macro skill of the photographer.

Detailed portraits of invertebrates (insects, arachnids, springtails, molluscs, centipedes, earthworms etc) are welcomed here, as long as they haven’t been photographed underwater.

Pictures should be of a single invertebrate that stretches across at least half of the frame.

The focus should be on the creature itself, rather than behaviour or artistic techniques. Focus stacking is allowed.

Butterflies & Dragonflies

This category celebrates the beauty of butterflies, moths, dragonflies and damselflies in all their stages of life. Or to put it another way, images of animals from the order of Lepidoptera and Odonata belong here.

Extreme macro images, focus stacked portraits, creatures in-flight or set within the wider landscape are just a few of the almost limitless options for this category.

Arachnids

A brand new category for CUPOTY 6. Spiders, scorpions, pseudoscorpions, harvestmen, sun or wind spiders, whip spiders, whip scorpions, palpigrades, ricinuleids, ticks and mites have their own category now.

Photograph them creatively, in macro detail, demonstrating behaviour or how they fit in with their environment.

For a full list of arachnids please refer to britishspiders.org.uk/arachnids.

Underwater

This category explores the aquatic world. We’re looking for photographs of any flora, fauna or object in fresh or sea water. The subject should be fully submerged underwater, unless the image is taken as a split-level shot. Wide angle close-ups and macro are accepted.

Plants

Plants in all their forms belong here, as does algae and seaweed. Beautiful blooms, plants in their habitat, moss, leaves, tree details and seeds are all possible subjects.

Enter creative abstracts, super-macro details or images of scientific study captured out in the field.

Creative pictures made in the home or studio should go into the new Studio Art category.

Fungi & Slime Moulds

The category for mushrooms, toadstools, slime mould and lichen.

They could be photographed in detail or captured up-close within their habitat. Enter creative abstracts or images of scientific study. There is no limit to how the subject is photographed, nor the creative processes used.

Intimate Landscape

Intimate Landscape

Capture the natural landscape or urban environment in close-up.

Photograph small scenes, tight crops, or overlooked details of the natural world. Suitable subjects include water, ice, stone, sand, minerals, fire, smoke, trees, light and reflections.

Pictures from the urban landscape, such as peeling paint, rusty surfaces, street furniture, boat hulls and graffiti are included this year.

Studio Art

Studio Art

This category is for photographs taken at home, in the studio or in the lab, or use creative post-processing to make composites or collages.

Images should have a strong pictorial quality with a fine-art perspective.

Think photographic experiments, abstracts of light, botanical arrangements, still lives, flat-lays, liquid drop art, oil and water combinations, paper constructions, bubbles, abstract photomicrographs, chemical reactions, microscopic crystals, collages and composites, camera-less prints and images made with a scanner, to suggest a few possibilities.

Photographs can be on any subject so long as it is close-up, macro or a photomicrograph. Creative expression is encouraged.

Young CUPOTY

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Young CUPOTY

Young Close-up Photographer of the Year is open to photographers aged 17 or under on the closing date of the competition. There are no restrictions on subject matter for this category, so feel free to send us any close-up, macro, extreme-macro and micro images that might catch the judges eyes.