1st Place in Wildlife: A male orangutan peers from behind a tree while crossing a river in Borneo, Indonesia.
Jayaprakash Joghee Bojan
2 of 20
1st Place in Aerials: In Sydney, Australia, the Pacific Ocean at high tide breaks over a natural rock pool enlarged in the 1930s. Avoiding the crowds at the city’s many beaches, a local swims laps.
Todd Kennedy
3 of 20
1st Place in Landscapes: Shortly before twilight in Kalapana, Hawai’i, a fragment of the cooled lava tube broke away, leaving the molten rock to fan in a fiery spray for less than half an hour before returning to a steady flow.
Karim Iliya
4 of 20
1st Place in Underwater: Blue-filtered strobe lights stimulate fluorescent pigments in the clear tentacles of a tube-dwelling anemone in Hood Canal, Washington.
Jim Obester
5 of 20
2nd Place in Wildlife: An adult Caribbean pink flamingo feeds a chick in Yucatán, Mexico. Both parents alternate feeding chicks, at first with a liquid baby food called crop milk, and then with regurgitated food.
Alejandro Prieto
6 of 20
3rd Place in Wildlife: Two grey herons spar as a white-tailed eagle looks on in Hungary.
Bence Mate
7 of 20
2nd Place in Aerials: Snow-covered metasequoia trees, also called dawn redwoods, interlace over a road in Takashima, Japan.
Takahiro Bessho
8 of 20
3rd Place in Aerials: On the flanks of Kilauea Volcano, Hawai’i, the world’s only lava ocean entry spills molten rock into the Pacific Ocean. After erupting in early 2016, the lava flow took about two months to reach the sea, six miles away.
Greg C.
9 of 20
People’s Choice in Aerials: Green vegetation blooms at the river’s edge, or riparian, zone of a meandering canyon in Utah.
David Swindler
10 of 20
Honorable Mention in Aerials: Migratory gulls take flight from a cedar tree being washed downstream by a glacial river in British Columbia, Canada.
Agathe Bernard
11 of 20
2nd Place in Landscapes: Sunlight glances off mineral strata of different colors in Dushanzi Grand Canyon, China.
Yuhan Liao
12 of 20
3rd Place in Landscapes: A summer thunderstorm unleashes lightning on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.
Mike Olbinski
13 of 20
People’s Choice in Landscapes: Sunset illuminates a lighthouse and rainbow in the Faroe Islands.
Wojciech Kruczynski
14 of 20
Honorable Mention in Landscapes: Morning fog blurs the dead trees of Romania’s Lake Cuejdel, a natural reservoir created by landslides.
Gheorghe Popa
15 of 20
2nd Place in Underwater: Typically a shy species, a Caribbean reef shark investigates a remote-triggered camera in Cuba’s Gardens of the Queen marine protected area.
Shane Gross
16 of 20
3rd Place in Underwater: Buoyed by the Gulf Stream, a flying fish arcs through the night-dark water five miles off Palm Beach, Florida.
Michael O’Neill
17 of 20
People’s Choice in Underwater: A Portuguese man-of-war nears the beach on a summer morning; thousands of these jellyfish wash up on Australia’s eastern coast every year.
Matty Smith
18 of 20
Honorable Mention in Underwater: Preparing to strike, tarpon cut through a ribbon-like school of scad off the coast of Bonaire in the Caribbean Sea.
Jennifer ONeil
19 of 20
People’s Choice in Wildlife: A great gray owl swoops to kill in a New Hampshire field.
Harry Collins
20 of 20
Honorable Mention in Wildlife: A Japanese macaque indulges in some grooming time on the shores of the famous hot springs.
Lance McMillan
