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The Nature Conservancy’s photography competition rewards beautiful portraits of animals, landscapes and plants.
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This year’s winners include sparring giraffes, a black sand beach, and neon mushrooms.
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The photos show the colorful diversity of life and landscapes on Earth.
The Nature Conservancy announced the winners of its annual photo contest on Sept. 29.
This year’s winning photos showcase the great diversity of life and landscapes on Earth.
Photographer Li Ping won the grand prix, using a drone to capture this photo of a highway crossing tree-shaped gullies in Tibet.
Other photos capture animals in the wild, like this pair of lions rubbing heads. The one on the right is clearly older than the lion on the left.
These giraffes appear friendly or romantic, but the way they fight is actually the way they fight.
These eagles were also fighting over a piece of salmon, according to the photographer.
This elephant seal had to fend off a striped caracara that was trying to attack its calf.
Another photo shows workers at Kenya’s Ol Pejeta Conservancy rushing to tend to an injured baby elephant, while celeryizing its mother so they can do it safely.
Animals aren’t the only ones who can be dramatic. Lightning struck this mountain at just the right time.
A layer of mist has given an eerie glow to this mangrove tree in Lamongan, East Java.
Fog also made this scene peaceful, as the mist cleared over a glassy lake and distant snow-covered trees.
Snow capped mountains are a stark contrast to a black sand beach in Iceland.
Fireflies in Japan create contrast, standing out as circles of bright yellow light against the dark forest.
Another brilliant pop of color, in another forest, comes from the bioluminescent Omphalotus Nidiformis, nicknamed “ghost mushrooms”.
Other photos capture man’s impact on nature, like this factory built on the edge of a beach in Greece.
Humans have also changed the landscape with wastewater ponds like these.
A more colorful sign of human presence are these pink lagoons near a salt mine.
A burnt scar, filled with charred trees, lies in the wake of the Dixie Fire, California’s largest single wildfire.
Further north along the Oregon coast, the fog pours into a natural hole in the rock known as the Drainpipe of the Pacific.
These dragon blood trees grow only in the highlands of the island of Socotra in the Indian Ocean.
Editor’s note: This story was originally published on November 19, 2022.
Read the original article on Business Insider
