This year's Close-Up Photographer of the Year drew more than 15,300 submissions, the highest number of entries in the competition's history. The shortlist, announced on 10 November, shows how far close-up photography now reaches: bats, spiders and slime molds sit alongside landscapes, insects and underwater life.

The competition celebrates photography that gets close to its subject, whether through macro lenses, microscopes or patient fieldwork. Among the shortlisted images are Joao Pontes's Suspended and Hira Punjabi's Bat Bath, a portrait of a bat mid-wash that captures the animal in an unguarded moment. The range of subjects underlines how the genre has grown beyond insects and flowers into a broad survey of the natural world at intimate scale.

Judging continues through the winter, and the winners will be announced in January. The competition has become a fixture of the photography calendar, drawing entries from professionals and amateurs alike, and the record entry count suggests the field keeps widening.

In the meantime the organisers have opened a new challenge on the theme of Close to Home, inviting photographers to find remarkable subjects within reach of their own front doors. Entries for that challenge remain open through the end of the month, offering a way in for anyone who missed the main competition.

The shortlist was published on 10 November, and it underlines how broad the genre has become. Close-up work demands patience and technical control: at high magnification, depth of field shrinks to millimetres, light must be managed carefully, and subjects such as bats or spiders rarely sit still. The shortlisted photographers have met those demands across an unusually wide range of subjects, from the natural world at its smallest to animals caught in unguarded moments.