Photo inspiration – Check out the winning images from National Geographic’s Pictures of the Year competition

A bald eagle prepares to take a seat on a branch that provides a strategic view of the Alaskan Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve shoreline. As other eagles bring in their freshly caught prey, onlookers rush in for their share. “It’s through hours of observing their habits and behavior that I’ve been able to capture moments like this”explains photographer Karthik Subramaniam, a software engineer with a passion for wildlife photography.

Honorable Mentions

During a getaway in the Austrian Alps, the photographer spotted on his map a road forming a loop through the mountains. He followed this road, skirting a small stream, and spotted this colorful tree among the other trunks. We see “a dimension of fantasy inspiration for me that gives me goosebumps”explains Alex Berger.

Archaeological records report that the salt mines at Maras in Peru may have appeared before the Inca Empire, 500 years before our era. The tradition continues today and families who own one of these wells can harvest up to 200 kg of salt each month. The photographer explains that “the salt wells receive water through canals fed by a nearby salty underground spring, and once the water has evaporated, the crystallized salt remains”. “To extract the salt, the miners use a wooden rake”.

It was while studying the feeding habits of small Arizona desert owls that animal biologist Bruce Taubert came across a rare species of scops owl. For nights, he photographed the birds bringing food to their offspring using an infrared ray triggering a high-speed flash. “Night geckos aren’t native to Arizona, their range is expanding”, explains the photographer. But how did they get there? “It may be that the geckos were delivered to the houses [voisines] by landscaping companies bringing in exotic plants.”

Asiilbek, a Kazakh nomad eagle hunter, prepares his golden eagle, Burged, during a hunt on horseback in the steppes of Bayan-Ölgii, Mongolia’s westernmost province. For this tradition which dates back more than 3000 years, eagles are captured in nests at the edge of the cliff and then trained to hunt hare, fox and even deer from a very young age. “For this image, I was lying on my stomach in a prone position and looking at the edge of the stream through the electronic viewfinder”says Eric Esterle. “The ground shook as Asiilbek’s horse passed a few meters from me, splashing me with icy water. I remember covering my camera with my body and lowering my head.”

King penguins crowd into the photographer’s viewfinder on the beaches of Gold Harbor in South Georgia. The Atlantic island, located not far from Antarctica, brings together nearly 25,000 pairs of king penguins, alongside other species such as gentoo penguins or elephant seals.

The Fagradalsfjall volcano on Iceland’s Reykjanes peninsula erupted for the first time in 6,000 years in May 2021. The lava flow lasted for six months, spreading its black rock across the landscape. According to Riten Dharia, it was “an exhibition of the raw and awesome power of nature”.

This aerial photo by photojournalist Tayfun Coskun shows the salt marsh ponds at Alviso Marina County Park in San Jose, California. These unique urban swamps are now threatened by rising sea levels and many projects are trying to preserve and restore the area, in order to protect the fauna and flora but also because of its ability to capture flood waters. and carbon dioxide.

It was while returning from the airport on an October morning that photographer Tihomir Trichkov crossed the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina and laid eyes on this sunrise over the valley. It was by zooming in with a telephoto lens that the photographer captured this shot of the misty valley in autumn colors. “I contemplated a silent mystery and created impressionism with a camera”says the author. “It had rained the day before, there was a ton of humidity in the air. I called her Legends of the Fog because when I look at it, I hear whispers”.

The key to a great photo is sometimes a sleepless night. The photographer captured this image on a freezing summer morning around 3:40 a.m. in Mount Rainier National Park from Tipsoo Lake. Across the shore, he could see a line of lamps created by the exhausted climbers approaching the 4,392-meter summit after a multi-day ascent. “The night sky was exceptionally clear and you could see the Milky Way just above the mountain”describes the photographer. “I was surprised to see the brightness level of the climbers’ lanterns”.