See the Spectacular Winners of Smithsonian Magazine’s 22nd Annual Photography Contest
By toying with perspective, this year’s best photos capture the sublime—and the uncanny
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If you didn’t know better, you might think that photographer Takuya Ishiguro was in imminent danger as he snapped his shot of one seemingly gigantic creature decapitating another. “It’s like a horror scene out of some crazy science fiction movie,” says Quentin Nardi, Smithsonian magazine’s chief photography editor and a judge of this year’s contest. In reality, Ishiguro spotted these regular-size praying mantises along a roadside in his Japanese hometown—albeit in a macabre embrace. He credits the low angle of the shot and the ground’s rough texture with supersizing the drama. “It adds dimension, making the subject seem more real and tangible,” he says.
The Grand Prize-winning image, one of nearly 30,000 entries submitted from more than 150 countries, was one of several category winners to play on our sense of scale and perspective: the grandeur of Utah’s Monument Valley contained inside a room. A bicyclist appearing to ride from our dimension toward another. A desert landscape dissolving into abstraction, all swirling lines and color. Each photograph, Nardi says, reframes the familiar: “An everyday occurrence meets an otherworldly treatment.”
(You can view all 60 finalists from the competition here.)
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This article is a selection from the April/May 2025 issue of Smithsonian magazine
Grand Prize
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Takuya Ishiguro
Osaki, Japan
Photographed: October 2021
Ishiguro, 44, who works as a production engineer, was in his car on the lookout for praying mantises to photograph. “I was driving slowly,” he recalls. He pulled over and approached the insects on foot, only to realize he’d happened upon one of the insect world’s most taboo occurrences, at least from a human perspective—a praying mantis snacking on another. “That this image was caught in such an urban setting—not in a tree, or a bush, or on any type of plant, but on the ground, on what looks like asphalt,” says Maria Keehan, Smithsonian magazine’s creative director and a contest judge. “Amazing.”
Artistic
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Anna Wacker
Berlin
Photographed: April 2022
A fan of architecture, Wacker was drawn to the Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders-Haus, a government building opened in 2003. She repeatedly circled the iconic structure with her Nikon digital camera in hand, searching for the perfect angle. “When a cyclist dressed in black rode by, perfectly aligning with the large circular backdrop of the building, I knew I had captured something special,” she says. A self-taught photographer who picked up the hobby in 2012, Wacker blended two still images—one a straight-on view of the cyclist in front of the circular opening of the geometric facade, the other obliquely angled to capture the facade and its upward-sweeping triangular overhang—and converted the resulting image to black and white. “The architectural form of the building and the wheels of the bicycle both embody cycles,” says Wacker, a business administrator in the tourism industry. “The image invites the viewer to contemplate the loops we find ourselves in both physically and metaphorically.”
American Experience
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Kaustav Sarkar
Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, Utah
Photographed: September 2024
On a family vacation to tour Utah’s iconic parks, New Jersey resident Sarkar, 24, a professional real estate photographer, grew tired of the standard gift shop fare—keychains, mugs, magnets and T-shirts. But at the Monument Valley visitor center, he stumbled on something distinct: a corner stuffed with “handcrafts by the people from the place,” he remembers—handmade pottery, textiles, boots and figurines made by local peoples who have lived near the valley’s giant buttes. “It spoke a lot about the character and the history of the place.” Sarkar took out his Google Pixel camera and positioned himself with his back to the checkout counter, snapping a photograph of the famous “Mittens” and Merrick Butte, each framed by a giant picture window. He says the image combines natural and human history in one shot. “The outside and the inside, the people and the place, all came together.”
Travel
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Michelle Lau
Sydney, Australia
Photographed: April 2022
Since taking up photography 12 years ago, Lau has visited more than 30 countries, usually by herself. “Traveling alone allowed me to deeply understand local cultures and discover their unique beauty. It broadened my horizons, redirecting my life toward independent photography,” says the former graphic designer, whose photography has led to collaborations with Vogue and other internationally renowned brands. While visiting Sydney, Lau, 35, who lives in Hong Kong, spent time at Bondi Beach. Perched three stories above crystal blue waters, she found a stellar view of the legendary Bondi Icebergs Club pools, leading out to the Pacific Ocean. Lau spent two hours taking about 20 photographs of the waters. “I preferred to take photos rather than swim,” she says.
Aerial
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Marek Biegalski
Hanksville, Utah
Photographed: October 2024
While visiting the mineral-rich Bentonite Hills, formed from Jurassic-era volcanic clay, Biegalski mounted his Canon onto an aerial drone to capture this colorful geological formation from nearly 290 feet above it. The self-taught photographer took multiple exposures at different settings, he says, “later blending them together to achieve the perfect balance of light, detail and depth.” A marketing professional back home in Ireland, Biegalski, 52, cherishes photographing nature’s wonders. “My goal is to capture the raw, untouched beauty of the natural world,” he says, “allowing its pure essence to shine through.”
Natural World
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Thorben Danke
Besigheim, Germany
Photographed: March 2022
Some photographers travel far and wide for the perfect subject. Danke, 42, an industrial electronics engineer, had the star of this close-up presented to him at home. That’s where his children found a brown marmorated stink bug lifeless on a windowsill. Danke attached a microscope lens at 20 times magnification to a Sony digital camera to zoom in on the insect’s compound eye, at the left of the photo. The distinctive metallic-colored patches belie the bug’s brown moniker. “If you look closely, you will find all the colors of the rainbow.”
People
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Michael Acheampong
Atlanta
Photographed: June 2024
Their attire may suggest that they’re focused on what separates them—the various countries from which the parents of these first-generation Americans emigrated to the United States. But their intent is to present “One Africa,” as Acheampong titled this photograph. Acheampong, 30, a Savannah College of Art and Design graduate student whose parents are from Ghana, wanted to create an image that represented unity among those of African heritage in his community. “Even though we may have differences, we’re alike more than we think,” he says. Staging the photograph at an Atlanta farmer’s market, Acheampong says the location’s ambiguity was intentional. “We wanted it to have the feel of Africa.”
Readers' Choice
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Erhan Coral
Mekong Delta, Vietnam
Photographed: October 1, 2024
Believe it or not, professional photographer Erhan Coral is not standing waist-deep in Vietnamese waters alongside the women who are hard at work gathering lilies in his winning image. “I was actually shooting from a small hilltop next to the water, overlooking the scene,” he says. When he immortalized this moment, Coral, 58, who started taking photographs in his teens, was in the Mekong Delta on assignment, “capturing the daily lives of people and the cultural richness of the country.” That includes the vibrant red, pink and purple waterlilies that draw visitors from around the world, especially from August to November when the flowers are most abundant. Coral, who lives in Turkey, took several dozen shots of the farmers, experimenting with his drone and camera from different angles. For this image, Coral says, the lighting was entirely natural. “Early morning sunlight provided a warm glow that enhanced the colors and textures,” he says. “I aimed to create an image that felt immersive, as if the viewer were floating alongside the women.”