🤯 INCRÍVEL: Amateur Division: 42 Nature Photos From The Exposure One Awards 😲
After recently sharing highlights from the Exposure One Awards’ Black & White Nature Photography Contest in the Animals category, and then jumping into the wildly different worlds of Aerial and Underwater, we’re back with another slice of the 2025 winners.
This time, we’re narrowing the focus to the non-professional division, pulling together the category winners and honorable mentions from the areas we haven’t featured yet: Earth’s Textures, Humans & Nature, Land, Light & Shadow, Minimalism, Other, and Pattern & Form.
Let us know which are your favorites, and of course, check out all of 2025’s submissions on Exposure One’s website and Instagram page.
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Description: A moment of bonding, trust, and empathy. Created at a therapeutic horse farm where children heal through contact with animals. It explores the delicate boundary between strength and vulnerability. The mirrored gesture of closed eyes is a symbol of the intimate interaction and mutual understanding. Silver Award in the Humans & Nature Category.
If Animals was all about presence and personality, and Aerial/Underwater leaned into “how is this even real,” this set is more about seeing. These categories reward photographers who can spot structure in chaos, and meaning in the quiet stuff most people walk past.
Description: In Turkana, Kenya, the little boys took their job of herding their family’s camels seriously. They led these huge beasts confidently, despite being dwarfed by them. Honorable Mention in the Humans & Nature Category.
Description: A tree grows through a man-made shaft of concrete, reaching for a sky we framed and forgot. Nominee in the Humans & Nature Category.
It’s cracked mud that looks like a map. A single figure in a landscape that suddenly feels enormous. Shadows that do more work than the subject itself. Minimal frames where one line, one ripple, or one shape carries the whole image.
Description: A lighthouse beam cuts through a star-filled sky, its spiral tower glowing against the darkness. Surrounded by quiet land and distant trees, it stands as a lone guide in the night—steady, bright, and timeless under the Milky Way. Bronze in the Light & Shadow Category.
What makes the non-professional division especially fun is that it’s open to anyone, and thus the moments and views caught are often ordinary in context, but the imagery itself is anything but that.
Description: “It began with a dream to capture a plane crossing the moon. When I learned a blood moon would occur in Sept 2025, I tracked flight and lunar paths for months. That night, I caught a fleeting moment — a plane gliding across the glowing moon, uniting humans and nature in one frame.” Silver Award in the Humans & Nature Category.
The strongest shots tend to have a clear idea and a clean execution, the kind of photos that make you pause, squint, and go, “Wait… what am I looking at?”
Description: The Mulafossur waterfall of the Faroe Islands falls precipitously to the ocean with the small village of Gasadalur in the backgroud. Honorable Mention in the Land Category. Nominee in the Ocean Category.
Description: “This series follows my creative journey of healing through creating. All photos taken with Bronica SQ-Ai and Zenzanon 80mm f/2.8 & 150mm f/4 lenses, mostly on Ilford Delta 100 or Kodak Tmax400 films at box speed. Home-developed and home-scanned. Locations include the Schwarzwald, Acadia, Dolomites, etc.” Honorable Mention in the Other Category.
Taken together, these winners and honorable mentions feel like a reminder that nature photography isn’t only about dramatic wildlife or extreme locations. Sometimes it’s about noticing the patterns, textures, and tiny visual “rules” the world keeps repeating and having the patience to frame them before they disappear.
Description: In the vast stillness of Brazil’s Lençóis Maranhenses, a lone figure stands between light and shadow, sand and water — a reminder of our smallness before nature’s endless forms sculpted by wind and rain. Honorable Mention in the Pattern & Form Category.
Description: A window view of the Tetons that ranchers have seen for the past 137 years. Silver Award in the Land Category.
Description: “A small house. The eternal ice. And we, fragments before the vastness.” Honorable Mention in the Land Category.
Description: Walking up Dune 45 in Sossusvlei is a challenge, and the 2 people at the bottom have a long way to go. Silver Award in the Light & Shadow Category.
Description: Nomadic Mongolian camel herders in the Gobi Desert. Honorable Mention in the Humans & Nature Category.
Description: Two terns face each other in the sky, their black and white wings unfolding gracefully. In their brief encounter, there is a tender closeness that suggests a timeless connection. Flight becomes poetry, a meditation on balance, harmony, and the beauty of presence. Bronze Award in the Minimalism Category. Nominee in the Animals Category.
Description: Pfahlwerk explores the quiet tension between man-made structures and natural space. Solitary piles rise from water and sky, reduced to essential lines. The series invites stillness, focusing on balance, rhythm, and the beauty of minimal form. Honorable Mention in the Minimalism Category.
Description: “Before being cooked & eaten, the veggies, cabbage & pumpkin let me discover their secret & mysterious labyrinthian soul.” Silver Award in the Other Category. Nominee in the Pattern & Form Category. Nominee in the Abstract Category.
Description: A palm jungle on Indonesia’s Penida Island portrays how quickly the sunlight is absorbed by the dense canopy above. Gold Award in the Earth’s Textures Category. Honorable Mention in the Minimalism Category. Honorable Mention in the Lights & Shadow Category.
Description: From the state of Tocantins in central Brazil, to New Zealand, to the Pantanal, and to the Serengeti in Tanzania, this gallery aims to showcase the different faces of the sky in various parts of the world. Each face has its own charm and fascination. Silver in the Earth’s Textures Category.
Description: “These feeding flamingos were photographed in Kenya. To obtain this viewing angle and create separation of the birds, I climbed an embankment overlooking the lake.” Bronze Award in the Minimalism Category.
Description: Living in an open area of mostly fields and grasslands, this lonely tree stands in stark contrast compared to the large wind turbines in this snowy-covered scene. Honorable Mention in the Minimalism Category. Nominee in the Land Category.
Description: Snow and fog accent the pines and majestic mountain ridges of Yosemite. Honorable Mention in the Earth’s Textures Category.
Description: Bambo Forest in Kyoto, using a vertical panning technique. Gold Award in the Pattern & Form Category. Honorable Mention in the Abstract Category.
Description: Khongoryn Els are some of the largest and most spectacular sand dunes in Mongolia. They are up to 300m high, 12km wide, and about 100km long. From afar, the dunes look like painted, up close, they seem to change into blankets made of velvet, discarded by some giant in the Mongolian steppe. Honorable Mention in the Earth’s Textures Category.
Description: “I took this photo on my iPhone as I was helping my sister move goats around the yards….the dust billowed up so much one could hardly see!” 3rd Place Overall Contest Winner Gold Award in the Humans & Nature Category.
Description: Long star trails spin like a cosmic wheel over the skeletal remains of a shipwreck on the Estonian coast. The UV torch skims across the weathered wood and glittering shore, linking the wreck’s slow decay with the patient rotation of the night sky. Bronze Award in the Other Category.
Description: This is a Calla lily lit by a flashlight. The abstract rendering reminded me of a ballerina soaring into the air with arms entwined above her head. Gold in the Light & Shadow Category.
Description: Light emerges from the horizon, dissolving shadow into form. In this moment of quiet transformation, the landscape becomes a meditation on time, renewal, and the subtle geometry of light itself. Silver Award in the Light & Shadow Category.
Description: “I love minimal photography, and in this photo, I like the fence disappearing in the distance, providing depth to this snow-covered landscape.” Gold Award in the Minimalism Category.
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