What do a volcano straddling the border of Chile and Bolivia, a 97-year-old woman dressed in her Sunday best at a bus stop in Chamblee, Georgia, and a peppermint shrimp in a sponge at the bottom of Bonaire’s Margate Bay all have in common?
Each is the subject of a winning photograph (categories People, Places, and Nature, respectively) in National Geographic’s International Photography Contest 2009.
The spectacular images by Hugo Machado, Debra Jansen, and William Goodwin took top honors amid a field of thousands submitted by photographers worldwide. National Geographic magazine has published weekly highlights on its website since August.
Standout submissions included images of animals galore, including (among many others) a brown vine snake
a newborn silver-leaf langur
a dusty elephant
a crabeater seal
curious mountain goats
a dwarf minke whale
and this Arctic fox.
Forces of nature held their own, too. Contest contributors served up fire
ice
waves
lightning
dust devils
and hmm, is this a tornado conjured up by Industrial Light & Magic? Well, no, it’s actually a space shuttle launch!
See all the winners and weekly highlight galleries, get desktop wallpaper of your favorite images, assemble jigsaw puzzles of contest photos, and browse contest winners from the last few years.
