Wildlife Photographer of the Year releases images from winners shortlist

You probably didn’t notice one thing: age category 11-14 years. Considering the void separating serious amateurs and professional photographers of any age and specialization from the rest of those (of any age) who just have cameras and don’t even dare to peek in the direction of camera manual and techniques more advanced than point&shoot, I doubt the judge board had the choice broad enough to choose other picture as a winner.
I speak from experience here. You just try to explain the concept of shutter speed + aperture + white balance (not to mention things like focal distance, perspective transmission, angle of view, DOF, lighting, object speed, composition, decisive moment and non-destructive processing) to random person who shoots in Auto. Sometimes that words fall onto fertile ground, but that’s quite infrequent. Add generally shorter attention spans of children combined with already significant number of other things considered more important in life and you’ll get my point.