Gallery: Photography is the real winner in the 16th annual Smithsonian Photo Contest

April 09, 2019

A finalist in the Altered Images category. In Saturday Morning, a sloe bug rests on top of a dandelion. A soothing, soft, delicate and relaxing bluish frame is dominated by the lurid red sharpness of the beetle

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Winner of the Travel category. Spring Snow is a capture of a woman walking in a magical light snowfall, backgrounded by beautiful geometries

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A finalist in the Travel category. Aqua appears to be a drone shot of a trio of jet skis just off the beach in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. We love the layering of white froth on luminescent green sea on rocks and sand below, and the dynamism of the jet ski trails that invites you to follow them back through their coiling journeys

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Winner of the People category. Carrying shows a par of young boys helping to carry heavy floats bearing sculptures depicting scenes from the Passion of the Christ during the Misteri do Trapani procession on Good Friday in Trapani, Italy

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A finalist in the Natural World category. Flying at the Infamous Mara River Crossing is a surreal and nightmarish frame showing the dust, splash and chaos as a huge crowd of wildebeest crosses the Mara River in Arusha, Tanzania. The dusty haze, the horns at the bottom and the leaping poses of the two main protagonists evoke renaissance paintings of war

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Winner of this year's Reader's Choice award: Giddyup, Partner shows a lava lizard riding a marine iguana and looking like a gundam pilot

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A finalist in the Natural World category. Cub is a remarkable capture of a backlit bear cub exhaling into the cold night air of Harghita, Romania, backgrounded by what looks like a starry sky – but is more likely to be raindrops or snowflakes

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Winner of the Natural World category. Red-Fronted Lemur shown in Kirindy Mitea National Park, Madagascar. The wide angle perspective indicates the photographer had a very close encounter with this little fella

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Winner of the Mobile category. Playing Piano shows a pair of friends trying to play music together, starkly lit and shot on a mobile device

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A finalist in the Mobile category. The Face is an eerily crisp and beautifully lit portrait that does a great job of demonstrating just how beautiful a cell phone photo can get these days

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A Finalist in the American Experience category. Delacroix-Like Dance shows a scene of absolute party pandemonium as a group of cowboys and cowgirls hit the dance floor at Club Black Castle in Ruleville, Mississippi. It's been a long time, if ever, since we partied this hard, and we particularly like the fact that there's a row of spectators sitting politely off to the left, dangerously close to the action

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The grand prize winner comes from the same photographer as the previous photo. Newest Cowboy in Town sees baby Jestin welcomed home by his father Jessie in Cleveland, Minnesota

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Winner of the American Experience category. The Painful Aftermath is an aerial shot, taken from a plane, of a thoroughly devastated Santa Clara neighborhood, a month after fires tore through it in 2017. The remaining blackened trees cast long shadows over the barren plots of dozens of leveled homes

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Winner of the Altered Images category. GRVTY2 No.4 is part of a series that aims to take everyday or famous places and show them in unexpected and thought-provoking ways. In this case, it's the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, exploded as if it were a Lego construction, levitating in space and conveying a feeling of enormous weight.

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A finalist in the Altered Images category. Moth shows a woman removing her second skin to reveal her true self, in the process turning from something cold, pale and withered into something that looks much younger and more vital. We wish we could do the same

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The winning frames from the 16th annual Smithsonian Photo Contest are in. Sixty finalists were selected from more than 48,000 entries from 207 countries competing for eight prizes across six categories. Here are all the winning shots plus a selection of our favorite finalists.

This year's Grand Prize went to Rory Doyle of Cleveland, Mississippi for a touching father and son image titled "Newest Cowboy in Town."

The Reader's Choice award, voted on by the public, went to Carla Rhodes of New York, for this cute pair of lizards she snapped in the Galapagos Islands, off Ecuador:

Russia's Denis Karasev took the win in the Travel category for this lovely image of a woman walking through light snow in Moscow, titled "Spring Snow."

Click through into the gallery for the rest of the winners and a few of our favorite finalists. Or you can see all 60 of the finalists at the Smithsonian website, where you can submit your own photos for next year's contest, and vote on the Reader's Choice award for 2020.

Source: Smithsonian

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