From a “smiling” crocodile to an incredibly colorful iceberg: beautiful winning images from a famous wildlife photography competition

Ranked sixth in the Other Animals category, this striking photo shows two American crocodiles in the mangroves of the Jardines de la Reina archipelago off the coast of mainland Cuba. It is titled “Smile” and is the work of photographer Laura Becker

Photographer Barbara Kaltenborn, 6th in the Mammals category, captures a polar bear with its cub in Norway’s Spitsbergen archipelago in this beautiful photo

Winner of the podium in the Landscapes category, this enchanting photo by Britta Strack shows the “mystical” Pasterzen Glacier at the foot of Austria’s Grossglockner

A blackbird is outlined by the moon in this beautiful shot, which took sixth place in the Birds category. Photographer Anton Trexler says it shows the “melancholy of the threshold between day and night”.

This brilliant photograph by Anton Trexler, winner of the bronze medal in the Urban Nature category, shows a gecko in a lantern in Spain

This hypnotic close-up of an owl is the work of photographer Karsten Mosebach. The portrait won third place in the Birds category.

LEFT: This magnificent photo of a deer under a full moon was taken before dawn on the edge of a nature reserve in the state of Brandenburg. Photographed by Andreas Geh, it placed eighth in the “Mammals” category. RIGHT: Photographer Andy Schmid describes this atmospheric shot with the words: “A male killer whale turns his back on the camera in a dark and cold fjord in northern Norway, leaving behind positive energy.” The image came ninth in the Mammal Place category

This mesmerizing shot of a floating iceberg in Greenland was captured by photographer Scott Portelli. He notes that “entwined sheets of ice reveal bright black, blue and translucent levels” within the iceberg. In the “Landscapes” category, the photo won eighth place

Photographer Peter Lindel notes that the “fog cloud” in this photograph is not the breath of the depicted lion, but “the body heat of the zebra that has just been killed” in the center of the image. The shot takes 10th place in the Mammals category.

With the memory of this touching portrait of a female elephant, Peter Lindel says: “The mother cow watched us until the last member of her small group passed us by.” The picture won the silver medal in the mammal category.

This beautiful image, captured in autumn, shows fog descending over the Vosges Mountains in France during sunrise. Photographer Radomir Jakubowski’s photo titled “Autumn Fog Inferno” won second place in the “Landscapes” category

This dynamic recording shows a mouse “taking a short break from nighttime on the ledge of an old and dusty basement window.” The work of photographer Maximilian Fellermann took sixth place in the “Urban Nature” category

With this photo, Silke Huttche was named GDT wildlife photographer of the year. Huttche, who lives in Wuppertal, says: “Every time I pass this power pole, I look up because there is always a bird there. So too on this somewhat cloudy day when I looked up and saw the kite sitting to one side. Just after a second [settled] on the other side. It got exciting – were the two a couple or rivals? They seemed to have nothing to say to each other and kept looking the other way.’ Huttche called the recording “Scenes from a marriage”. It also wins the main prize in the “Urban Nature” category.