Meet the 2026 Judges

Judges for the United States–Canada contest include:

Grand, Plants for Birds, Birds Without Borders, Conservation, Birds in Landscapes Prizes

• Sabine Meyer, photography director, National Audubon Society
• Sadie Hine, wildlife photographer and illustrator 
• Mary Anne Karren, conservation photographer
• Marlene Pantin, senior program manager, Plants for Birds, National Audubon Society
• Owen Reiser, filmmaker and cinematographer 
• Shey Smith, educator and bird photographer 
• Taty Soto-Bartzi, wildlife biologist and bird photographer

Video Prize

• Morgan Heim, conservation photographer, filmmaker, and adventurer
• Navarre Marshall, wildlife photographer, filmmaker, and adventurer 
• Maddy Rifka, biologist, fire lighter, and conservation storyteller

Female Bird Prize

• Members of the Galbatross Project: Brooke Bateman, Stephanie Beilke, Jessica Gorzo, Martha Harbison, Joanna Wu
• Elizabeth Yicheng Shen, wildlife and nature photographer

Sabine Meyer

Sabine Meyer is the photography director for the National Audubon Society. She has worked for major national consumer magazines and a roster of clients in the not-for-profit and academic worlds. Sabine is an affiliate with the International League of Conservation Photographers (iLCP) and serves on the faculty at the School of the International Center of Photography, where she teaches photo editing and conservation storytelling. She also spent close to a decade as the co-founding director and curator of Fovea Exhibitions, a Beacon, New York–based nonprofit gallery advocating visual literacy through photojournalism and documentary photography. She mentors and reviews photo portfolios regularly and has recently volunteered for Vital Impacts and Women Photograph.

Sadie Hine

Sadie Hine is an awarded wildlife photographer and artist based in Humboldt County, California. Her fascination with wildlife began in Colorado, where early encounters with urban owls sparked a deep interest in naturalism and introduced her to the world of wildlife photography. Since then, she has developed a passion for overlooked subjects and the diverse coastal ecosystems of Northern California, documenting everything from seabirds to nudibranchs. Sadie serves as an ambassador for Girls Who Click and Nature’s Best Photography and is a founding member of the Birding Club at Cal Poly Humboldt. Her images have earned international recognition, including a winning image in the 2022 Mkapa African Wildlife Awards, and finalist honors in the 2022 Audubon Top 100 and 2025 BigPicture competition.

Mary Anne Karren

Mary Anne Karren is a lifelong lover of art, science, and the natural world from Salt Lake City, Utah. Mary Anne became a conservation photographer almost overnight when she realized that the vast and seemingly permanent Great Salt Lake (on the shores of which her city is built) is absolutely covered with birds, outrageously beautiful, and deeply imperiled. She set out with her camera to convey a new narrative and a sense of connection with this unique ecosystem, juxtaposing the vibrant birdlife of Great Salt Lake with its otherworldly landscapes. Mary Anne serves on the board of FRIENDS of Great Salt Lake, and her work has appeared in Audubon and High Country News.

Marlene Pantin

Marlene Pantin brings an interdisciplinary background to her work at the National Audubon Society with broad experience in behavioral health, applied research and policy. She currently serves as the senior program manager for the Plants for Birds program. Her work leading Plants for Birds involves utilizing strategic partnerships and collaborations to advance native plant use at the local and national level as a means of supporting Audubon’s conservation efforts to protect birds. She is the founder and executive director of a local community nonprofit dedicated to conserving urban parks and recreational spaces and co-founder of a borough-wide parks’ advocacy organization.

Owen Reiser

Owen Reiser is a filmmaker and cinematographer who spent six years shooting on high-budget natural history projects for PBS, National Geographic, the BBC, and Netflix. He now focuses on his own independent projects, including “Listers,” a low-budget docu-comedy he created with his brother Quentin about the culture of birdwatching.

Shey Smith

Shey Smith is an educator and bird photographer based in Brampton, Ontario. While he appreciates the beauty in all avian species, he has a particular fondness for shorebirds and waterfowl, often working in challenging weather to capture environmental images. Though passionate about photographic creativity, his approach prioritizes fieldcraft and ethical photography practices above all. Through photo storytelling and community bird walks, Shey partners with regional organizations to promote conservation while using these programs to highlight the connections between nature, mental health, and social justice.

Taty Soto-Bartzi

Taty Soto-Bartzi is a wildlife biologist from the San Francisco Bay Area. While attending grad school in the Midwest five years ago, she fell in love with birding when she witnessed the mass Sandhill Crane migration through northwestern Indiana. Her obsession with looking through binoculars quickly evolved into an obsession with bird photography. As a self-taught birder and bird photographer she is proud that her work has been featured by the Discovery Channel, Audubon, and at various airports. Her love for birds led her to a career in wildlife biology, where she now gets to bird on the clock! In her free time, she bands songbirds and owls.

Morgan Heim

Morgan (Mo) Heim is a conservation photographer, filmmaker, and adventurer focusing on the ways human-influenced environmental changes impact wildlife. With a background in science and journalism, her goal is to find the beauty, humor, and perseverance in stories about wildlife, and how those stories teach us about who we are and who we might become. Morgan is a senior fellow of the International League of Conservation Photographers, a mentor for Girls Who Click, and founder of Neon Raven Story Labs, a storytelling and strategy platform for conservation. In 2020 she co-launched Her Wild Vision Initiative aimed at raising the voices of diverse women in the craft of conservation visual storytelling. Named a 2024 National Geographic Explorer her work appears in outlets such as Audubon, Smithsonian, National Geographic, Newsweek, and The New York Times.

Navarre Marshall

Navarre Marshall is a wildlife filmmaker and adventurer focused on recording bird vocalizations and other animal sounds. Based out of Northern Kentucky, Navarre’s love for wildlife and traveling convinced him to build out a campervan and visit as many national parks as he could. While exploring the Everglades he became captivated by the sounds of nature, especially bird calls. A fascination with regional bird dialects and song neighborhoods, due to Navarre’s musical background, fueled a desire to travel and film the same species in different locations to compare their dialects. After sharing his videos on social media, it became clear to Navarre that many people unknowingly connect to nature through bird songs that are often tied to nostalgic memories. Navarre’s goal is to inspire new birdwatchers by teaching them their local bird sounds and providing them a video library of diverse bird vocalizations.

Maddy Rifka

Maddy Rifka is a fish and wildlife biologist, wildland fire lighter, and award-winning conservation storyteller. Her work as a biologist and fire lighter takes her to remote reaches of northern California to monitor native fish populations by snorkel and tend to the land with good (prescribed) fire. As a filmmaker and photographer, Maddy grounds her storytelling in human relationships with the land, exploring topics such as California Condor reintroduction, good fire, river restoration, fish migration, mountain lion behavior, and the environmental impacts of illegal cannabis cultivation. Maddy has worked with publications such as National Geographic, Smithsonian, Audubon, and the BBC. She won the Human/Nature category in BigPicture 2024 with her photo 'Good Fire,' and her work has been a finalist at Banff Mountain Film Festival, International Wildlife Film Festival, and Wildlife Conservation Film Festival, among others. Maddy is an Emerging League member of the International League of Conservation Photographers and a Girls Who Click Ambassador. She is currently working as a California Academy of Sciences Osher Fellow on a long-term photography and film project focusing on wildlife and wildfire. Above all else, she wants to give a voice to those that need it and tell stories that inspire hope.

Elizabeth Yicheng Shen

Elizabeth Yicheng Shen is a passionate amateur wildlife and nature photographer whose journey began just before the pandemic. Inspired by the breathtaking landscapes of Yosemite, she took up photography to capture the beauty of nature. With a deep love for animals—both birds and mammals—and a strong sense of empathy for the challenges they face in the wild, her photography aims to tell stories of life in its purest form. By transforming touching moments into eternal stories, she seeks to become a voice for the voiceless and raise awareness about the natural world. As the recipient of the inaugural Female Bird Prize in the Audubon Photography Awards, Elizabeth feels deeply honored to return as a judge for this category, a role that holds special significance.

Founders of the Galbatross Project

The founders of the Galbatross Project are a group of scientists, birders, writers, and conservationists who are connected through the National Audubon Society. They first came together as “The Galbatrosses” to count feathered females at the 2019 World Series of Birding. Because the pandemic made it impossible for the team to convene for another World Series, in May 2020 they established #FemaleBirdDay to share the love of female birds with the rest of their diverse community via social media. The Galbatrosses include Brooke Bateman (she/her), Audubon’s director of climate science; Jessica Gorzo (she/her), wildlife ecologist; Stephanie Beilke (she/her), senior manager, conservation science for Audubon Great Lakes; Martha Harbison (they/them), communications director, community building for Audubon; and Joanna Wu (she/her), PhD student at UCLA. Through the Galbatross Project they hope to create an engaging way for everyone to get to know some of the most overlooked birds on the planet.