Gold

Lava River by Xuejun Bian (USA)

July 2021. Iceland.

Silver

Little Warm Hut by Wei (David) Dai (USA)

“It was one of the coldest days of that year in the Upper State of New York. I ventured to Niagara Fall, driving more than 7 hours in the cold weather. Although I visited the famous waterfall many times before it was my first trip to view it in the frigid weather. I was attracted to this scenery shown in the photo as the little house was lit up when it’s dark. The warmth from the house formed a nice contrast with the cold surrounding. The blurred waterfall greatly enhanced the mood of the photo. I used Nikkor 70-200 mm f/2.8 lens to take this photo (Parameters: ISO 100, 4 Sec, f/13, 116 mm).”

Wide’s Cave by Alessandro Cantarelli (Italy)

March 2019. Iceland.

“A 300° panorama stitch of 15 shots in a really famous location in Iceland in March 2019. I did 65 shots with a 60° rotation, each of them with 3 exposures to preserve shadows and high lights for a total of 15 photos captured with Canon 5d Mark 4 + Samyang 12mm f2.8 Fisheye. Thousands of great photographers every year did beautiful work here, it’s really hard to do something unique. In the various photo-tours that we drove in this location I looked for something special to photograph this beautiful scenery, until I had this weird idea in the lower part of the falls there is a strange rock formations that, if taken from inside with ultrawide lenses, could take the resemblance of a cave, I decided to try entering the water with all the shoes… and so…. it was worth it!”

Bronze

Midnight Sunset by Simon Xu (USA)

2018. Seljalandsfoss, Iceland.
“It was a typical cloudy day in Iceland with just a hint of sun. But when the sunset finally broke out from under the clouds near horizon, the most amazing light brought the beautiful waterfall and everything else around it to life. In Iceland, the summer sun does not set until midnight.”