UPDATE: according to media reports, this photo was shot with a model animal and the photographer has been stripped of his prize.

Sometimes I think I’m going to get bored of environmental photography competitions. There are, after all, only so many shots of a penguin looking cute or a deer framed against the sky it is possible to take.

Then someone takes a photograph like this. A photograph that makes you say “that can’t be real”.

However José Luis Rodríguez swears this shot isn’t faked and that he took this picture of an Iberian wolf in Spain. You have to feel sorry for the other entrants in this year’s Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition; one imagines that the judges saw Rodríguez’s shot and that was it, no one else had a chance. (And that’s not a misspelling, the competition sponsor is called Veolia Environnement.)

That’s not to say the other entries aren’t great. The two shown below are Fergus Gill’s Clash of the Yellowhammers and Thomas Haney’s ‘The lone fir’.

There are even some nice photos of a deer framed against the sky and a cute penguin. But seriously, can this photo of the wolf be real? Really?

See all the images in the online gallery.

The Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition is owned by the Natural History Museum and BBC Wildlife Magazine. All images are credit of the photographer and Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2009.