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 against the bark to leave her scent and mark territory in Land of the Leopard National Park. “The lighting, the colours, the texture – it’s like an oil painting,” says WPY chair of judges Roz Kidman-Cox. “It’s almost as if the tiger is part of the forest. Her tail blends with the roots of the tree. The two are one,” she told BBC News. (BBC)…[+]