Denizen of the Lake – My Favourite Photograph of 2025

Nature is awesome – not just in the Lego-movie Everything is Awesome sense, but in the original, older sense of inspiring awe and reverence. This is more obvious when we go out into the wilderness, or are confronted by majestic landscapes. Living in big cities, as I have done all my life, it can be easy to forget.

Monitor lizards are a common sight in the nature parks of Singapore, so I often take them for granted. It’s amazing what we can get used to – two-metre long reptiles walk among us, wrestling each other and eating pythons – and sometimes we don’t even give them a second glance.

I have my fair share of monitor-lizard photos – sharp, well-exposed images with lots of detail. But last month, on a morning walk at a nature reserve, I saw an arresting sight. A rather large lizard was sitting half-submerged in the lake. Behind him, dawn was breaking, and a light mist lingered over the water. The apartment blocks in the background look almost insignificant. If nature took over the city, I imagine this is how it would be. The lizard is in his element.

I stepped off the boardwalk to get a lower angle, and my friend took a behind-the-scenes photo with her phone.

I had to get quite close because I had a wide (23mm) lens on my Fuji X-E5. In general, wide lenses are not ideal for wildlife photography. But if the wildlife in question is unbothered by proximity, you can get a more interesting perspective than you would with a telephoto lens. I took three photos of the lizard, and in one of them he has his tongue out. And this, quite possibly, is my favourite photo of 2025.

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