Founded in 2009, the Epson International Pano Awards have rapidly grown into an exciting annual showcase of the most spectacular panoramic photographs from around the globe. The recently announced 2017 winners are impressive works, featuring an awe-inspiring array of images from Photographer of the Year, Jesus Garcia's sublime sunrise shots, to Darren Moore's ghostly fog-shrouded images.
This year the competition received over 5,000 entries from 71 different countries. The judging panel tasked with sifting through them all comprised an assortment of legendary photographic figures, including landscape photography icon Jeff Mitchum and surf photographer Aaron Chang.
The main awards are divided between an open category for all photographers and a category for non-professional/amateur photographers. Within each category there is a nature/landscape prizewinner and a built environment/architecture prizewinner.
While the competition does allow for artificial manipulation of the photographs, the entry notes do suggest that excessive manipulation may be scored down by the judges and all elements in the images must be real in origin and not computer generated. This is worth noting as some of these spectacular images have an other-worldly beauty that is rather astonishing to behold.
Take a look through our gallery and check out the striking images captured by both amateurs and professionals for the 2017 Pano Awards.
Source: The Pano Awards