Winning Shots from the 2015 National Geo Photo Contest
The word “awesome” is often overused these days. But it would seem to be an appropriate term to apply to many of the winning pictures from the 2015 National Geographic photo contest.
The winners were announced last week, including the top spots in the contest’s three categories, People, Places, and Nature. Melbourne, Australia-based photographer James Smart claimed the nature-category prize, as well as the contest’s grand prize — $10,000 and a trip to Washington, D.C. Smart shot what Nat Geo calls a “rare and jaw-dropping anti-cyclonic tornado” as it touched down in open farmland, narrowly missing a home near Simla, Colorado.” (See above.)
Smart took the picture on the final day of a 15-day storm-chasing trip through the Great Plains with his brother and a few friends.
“The tornado was slowly getting bigger as it picked up the dust and soil from the ground on the farmland,” Smart told PetaPixel. “It wasn’t moving very fast, so we kept getting closer as it tracked next to the home as you can see in the image.”
“We were lucky enough to be on the west of the tornado, so it was front lit,” he added. “This really helped to get great detail out of the image and the perfect light for the sky and foreground.”
Here is a selection of other winners from the contest.
People Category Winner: Joel Nsadha
Based in Binghamton, New York, Joel Nsadha won the contest’s People category with a shot titled “At the Playground” — a portrait of a boy named Bwengye in Kampala, Uganda. “He cherishes his bicycle more than anything and brings it to this playground in the slum every evening, where he watches kids playing soccer,” writes Nsadha.
Places Category Winner: Francisco Mingorance
Spanish photographer Francisco Mingorance’s winning photo, titled “Asteroid,” is actually a view of a scene here on Earth.. “While preparing a report on Spain’s Rio Tinto from the air, I decided to include the phosphogypsum ponds located in the marshes of red, whose radioactive discharges has destroyed part of the marsh,” he writes. “As an environmental photojournalist I had to report this story, but had to do it with an image that by itself attracts the viewer’s attention. On a low-flying training flight, this image caught my attention for its resemblance to the impact of an asteroid on its green waters.”
Honorable Mention, Nature: Bence Mate
Hungarian photographer Bence Mate traveled to Mkuze, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, where he shot white-fronted bee-eaters gathering on a bough before going to sleep in burrows scraped into a sand wall. “I was working on this theme for 18 days, as there were only five to ten minutes each day when the light conditions were appropriate,” he writes. “Ninety percent of my efforts to capture this image were not successful. I used flashlights to light the bee-eaters sitting on the branch, but not the others flying above. At this angle, the backlight generated rainbow coloring through the wings of the flying birds.”
Honorable Mention, Nature: Tugo Cheng
Based in the UK, Tugo Cheng captured a surrealist landscape in Shihezi, Xinjiang Uygur Zizhiqu, China. “As the largest system of mountain ranges in Central Asia, Tian Shan — which translates to ‘sky-mountain’ in Chinese — has one of the best collections of natural landscapes in the world and is considered a paradise for outdoor adventures,” he writes. “Thanks to the richness of the land’s sediments, compounded by the power of erosion caused by rivers flowing down the mountains, the north face of Tian Shan is carved into stunning plateaus and colorful canyons hundreds of meters deep, resulting in this surrealist painting in nature.”
Honorable Mention, People: Yanan Li
Chinese freelance photographer Yanan Li discovered this scene in Shalamcheh, Khuzestan, Iran. “In October 2014 in Khuzestan, Iran, I came across a group of female Iranian students on the border between Iran and Iraq,” he writes. Some of them climbed up the tanks left after the war between the two countries and took pictures of themselves. I pressed the shutter when I saw this girl stretch out her arms and turn to face the Iraqi border.”
Originally published by Pro Photo Daily for AI-AP. Follow Pro Photo Daily on Facebook and American Photography on Twitter. Sign up for the free Pro Photo Daily Newsletter.
