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The Nature Conservancy’s photography competition recognizes stunning portraits of animals, landscapes and plants.
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This year’s winners include training giraffes, a black sand beach and neon mushrooms.
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The photographs showcase the colorful diversity of life and landscapes on Earth.
The Nature Conservancy announced the winners of its annual photography competition on September 29.
This year’s winning photos showcase the wide variety of life and landscapes on Earth.
Photographer Li Ping won the Grand Prize using a drone to capture this photo of a highway cutting through tree-shaped hollows in Tibet.
Other photos capture animals in the wild – like this pair of lions rubbing their heads. The one on the right is clearly older than the lion on the left.
These giraffes seem friendly or romantic, but bowing or nodding their heads and necks towards each other actually shows how they fight.
According to the photographer, these eagles were also fighting over a piece of salmon.
This elephant seal had to fight a striped caracara that was trying to attack its calf.
In another photo, workers at the Ol Pejeta Conservation Area in Kenya run to treat an injured calf while giving sedatives to its mother so she can do it safely.
It’s not just animals that can be dramatic. Lightning struck this mountain just in time.
A layer of fog gave an eerie glow to this mangrove tree in Lamongan, East Java.
The mist thinned over a glassy lake and snowy trees in the distance, making the scene seem peaceful.
The snowy mountains are in stark contrast to a black sand beach in Iceland.
Fireflies in Japan stand out as bright yellow rings of light over the dark forest, creating a contrast.
Another burst of bright color in another forest comes from the bioluminescent Omphalotus Nidiformis, nicknamed ‘ghost mushrooms’.
Other photographs capture the impact humans have on nature, such as this factory built on the edge of a beach in Greece.
People have also changed the landscape with wastewater ponds like this one.
A more colorful sign of human existence are these pink lagoons near a salt mine.
A burn scar filled with charred trees lies in the wake of the Dixie Fire, California’s largest single wildfire.
Further north, along the Oregon coast, mist drains into a natural hole in the rock known as the Pacific’s Drain Pipe.
These dragon blood trees only grow in the high plateaus of Socotra Island in the Indian Ocean.
Editor’s Note: This story was originally published on November 19, 2022.
Read the original article on Business Insider
