I've always loved black, and I realized that, from the beginning, man went into completely dark caves to paint. They painted with black too. They could have painted with white because there were white stones all over the ground, but no, they chose to paint with black - in the dark.~Pierre Soulages

Real black is rather rare in the landscape. The black clouds on the horizon, the black depths of a lake, or the blackness of the night sky are rarely, in fact, black. Photographers require light to record on film or a digital sensor, and black is the absence of light. Black surfaces are those that absorb most of the light falling on them and emit little back. Few surfaces in nature absorb so much light as to be considered a pure black. Even in the night sky and the absorbing void that is space beyond, the scattering of light by particles in the atmosphere often leaves a trace of colour when viewed from the ground (hence the recent marketing of night sky filters to remove the scattered light from urban sources in a certain range of wavelengths). Certainly, there are dark shadows that might need to be carefully exposed to reveal some detail, but they are not often pure black.

So the use of pure black in an image is to employ a form of artistic license and indeed has a long history in art, going back to the prehistoric use of black in creating cave and rock paintings (see the quotation above). Black was then one of the readily available pigments, as it was later in the manufacture of inks, where it became particularly refined (using a mixture of pine soot and animal glue) in the production of Chinese calligraphy and landscape painting called Shanshui (mountain water) art. Later in the 14^th Century Chinese monks introduced the style to Japan where inks made of oil lamp soot and glues were used in the Sumi-e style of refined monochrome landscapes, one of the features of which was that they should be produced with minimal but exquisite brush strokes.

The use of black in painting was taken to the extreme towards the end of the 19^th Century by the French painter Paul Bilhaud (1854-1933) with an all black rectangle with the (not very woke) title Combat de nègres dans la nuit of 1882¹. This was taken further by Alphonse Allais in his Primo-avrilesque album of “monochroîde” works of 1896². Both Bilhaud and Allais were members of the Incohèrents, a group that existed for a relatively short period during the 1880s but which influenced a number of later 20^th Century movements in art including dadaism, surrealism and minimalism in ways that have only recently been revealed³.

Paul Billhaud, Combat de nègres dans la nuit (1882)⁴

There have been other traditions of the use of (near) black in the Western art tradition. These include the chiaroscuro style ⁵(from the Italian chiaro, light, and oscuro, dark) used in the Renaissance by artists such as Raphael, Caravaggio, Rembrandt and his pupil Gerrit Dou. The style was mostly used for portraits and still life paintings. In most of these paintings, any landscape is generally obscured in the background, but at the end of the 18^th Century, the English painter Joseph Wright of Derby adopted the style for both portraits and landscapes.

My parents, Ardis and Philip Hyde, as a team, made a full-time living in nature photography for 60-years before many others did. They also not only helped to make national parks and other wilderness, they quietly and for the most part privately, helped pioneer the Post War wave of the Back to the Land Movement. Before sustainably became a trend, they lived a low carbon, low impact, self-sufficient lifestyle.

They lived in the wilderness, which not only surrounded their home and gardens in the Northern Sierra, but also became the typical destination for professional projects, many in national or state parks. They also made a point of traveling over back roads through the wildest places possible on the way to photography locations. They often parked for the night far from any towns, perhaps in a gravel quarry, on a side road or in a primitive campground.

Philip, Ardis and David Self-Portrait, Waterpocket Fold, Capitol Reef National Park

Though Mom grew up in Sacramento and Dad in San Francisco, both of them had roots in camping, farming and wilderness. Mom often spent weekends on her grandfather’s ranch. Also, her father took the family camping in the Sierra many times a year. Dad hiked in the hills of San Francisco, Marin County and beyond. He first backpacked in Yosemite National Park with the Boy Scouts when he was 16. He also backpacked the Yosemite backcountry with his father and brother. Part of what brought Mom and Dad together was a desire to be in the outdoors as much as possible.

Starting early in Dad’s career, going against the advice of both of his mentors Ansel Adams and David Brower, he and Mom decided to live in the wilderness, not just work there. They took up residence in the mountains far away from the photography marketplace. They acquired 18 acres with National Forest bordering two sides of the property. Dad built what was originally only a 1200 square foot home with a garage, but he added a second bedroom and a larger studio later. The house sits about three hundred yards above Indian Creek on a shelf formed by an ancient rockslide from the precipitous rock faces of the peak across the creek called Grizzly Ridge, which rises 3,000 feet nearly straight up and is capped with snow most of the year.

Piers, San Francisco Waterfront (see the end of the article for captions for all photos)

Dad designed, drew the plans and built the house by hand. It took him two years because he did most of the work himself with some help from Mom in the evenings. A few other friends helped pour the foundation and hoist the large beams for the roof. Everything about the home, the large fireplace made from stones from the property, the flat roof, the solar hot water panels, the clerestory windows, the raised bed vegetable garden, the fruit trees and the whimsical stone lined pond and flower garden were all ideas adopted from other pioneers of conservation and low-impact living.

Mom not only taught kindergarten full-time in Greenville, California, she also became known for her knowledge of organic gardening, food storage and preparation. She became an expert on gardening to attract butterflies, bees and other beneficial creatures in the Mountain West. She planted Butterfly Bushes, Virginia Creeper, and Japanese Maples. She was an expert plant pirate and regularly gave other gardeners cuttings. She grew 4-5 varieties of Dogwood and many other colorful shrubs and dwarf trees. She also became highly skilled at canning, freezing, preserving, making her own soap, bread, cheese, butter, tofu and many other household goods. She grew strawberries, raspberries, and rhubarb. When I was about seven, she and I planted a vegetable garden.

Riffle Through Woods at Rough Rock, Northern Sierra, California, 1983

For better harvest yields, Dad let in more sunlight by cutting trees at the edge of the forest for firewood, leaving me to dig out the stumps. From a young age I remember hauling straw, sand, topsoil, manure, gravel, sawdust, wood chips and peat moss for the garden, as well as the winter’s wood supply in many loads in our dark green dented 1952 Chevrolet step-side pickup my parents bought from photographer Brett Weston in 1955.

He not only put in a lot of physical labor at home helping mom carve a home out of the wilderness, but photographed far from home for long months each year and sent out masses of press and show prints when he was home. He was working to get his nature photographs used by organizations and publishers before the market for nature photography had been established. However, by continuously sending out prints, negatives and transparencies, and because nobody could argue with their quality and power for illustrating nature, publishing credits and exhibitions gradually came. Also, his mentor David Brower began to expose his work and use it in the popular and widely known Sierra Club Calendars, the Sierra Club Bulletin, brochures, and other publications for many conservation organizations such as National Audubon and the Wilderness Society, as well as many more local groups all over the Western States. Sunset magazine and other expensive slick magazines started using more photographs solely of nature during the transition to color as image reproduction technologies improved. Sunset, Life and other publishing houses also produced books showing and selling the American West to new families after World War II, who were also newly automobile-mobile and looking for places to visit, explore, camp and stay in the burgeoning variety of motel franchises. Hyde’s photographs, by the end of his full-time career, had been the primary illustrations in a few dozen large picture volumes and appeared in over 80 other books.

Meanwhile, Ansel Adams, Edward Weston and his sons Brett and Cole, Minor White, Imogen Cunningham, Dorothea Lange and other fine print makers became increasingly popular in the black and white collecting art world. They invited Hyde and his other classmates and a few others who had talent in the darkroom, to exhibit with them in significant shows all over the nation and the world. White curated a solo show of Hyde’s work at the George Eastman House Museum, which led to a Hyde solo show at the Smithsonian in 1956.

From the time of their marriage in June 1947 until Dad began to lose his eyesight in 1999, he spent an average of 99 days a year in the field. Mom accompanied him the most during the months of June through August when she had time off from teaching kindergarten. Dad traveled mainly between April and October in the Western United States; camping, backpacking, driving, riding horses, mules, trains, planes and boats to access wilderness for almost one third of every year of his more than 60 years of full-time photography.

The spring and summer of 1955 are good examples of how much the Hydes traveled in Dad’s early career. Even with this level of road travel, Ardis and Philip still averaged far fewer driving miles than the average American couple. Throughout a 60-year full-time photography career, the Hydes averaged together less than 10,000 miles per year. American couples average over 27,000 miles per year.

Drakes Beach from Hilltop, Pt. Reyes National Seashore, California, 1962

In 1955, after buying the 1952 Chevy Pickup from Bret Weston in March, Mom and Dad put a camper shell on it, christened it Covered Wagon and took off in it from April through September. They spent the last 12 days in April over 300 miles from home in the Coast Redwoods. Next Dad turned around and journeyed alone over 600 miles south for the first half of May to photograph Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite. Continuously for the next three months Mom and Dad backpacked, camped, river rafted and drove thousands of miles through Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon. This included three river trips: 13 days on the Colorado River through little known Glen Canyon, 26 days on the Yampa River in Utah and Wyoming inside Dinosaur National Monument, and five days on the Canyon of Lodore on the Green River, also in Dinosaur. By August 16, after three weeks in Wyoming in Yellowstone National Park and Grand Tetons National Park on a Sierra Club Pack Trip, Mom got a ride home with participants, but Dad continued on to Glacier National Park way up in Montana for 10 days and Olympic National Park in Washington for two more weeks. Dad did not see home until September 10.

Cathedral in the Desert, Glen Canyon, Utah, 1964

Such a schedule makes it challenging to build much of a life at home. However, after I was born in 1965 Mom began to stay home from many of Dad’s photography trips and she planted a garden. Her gardening endeavors increased in size and scope until when I was about 10 years old, she had expanded the tenable area from one side of the house to three sides and her vegetable garden grew to approximately 15 by 20 meters.

Part of what moderated Mom and Dad’s push to achieve was a belief that life is meant for living and not just for work. My parents read Eastern philosophers such as Lao Tzu, who taught that happiness lies in being rather than doing. They read Lin Yutang, who in his large volume called The Importance of Living enlightens the reader with such chapter titles as, Human Life as a Poem, Playful Curiosity, Tea and Friendship, Enjoyment of Nature, and On Going About and Seeing Things. Many other texts of philosophy, art, culture and large picture books lined the walls of bookshelves in our mountain home.

Near Water’s Edge, Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona, 1964

Another book I remember seeing around the house, Living the Good Life: How to Live Sanely and Simply in a Troubled World by Helen and Scott Nearing, contained instructions on how to live an enjoyable, self-sufficient lifestyle. About two months before my mother passed on in 2002, I interviewed her about gardening for beneficial insects and wildlife for a magazines article. We also discussed a garden I planted at my own home near Pecos, New Mexico. At one point Mom excused herself from the dining table where we were talking, walked into her bedroom and came back with her own personal copy of Living the Good Life. With moistening eyes, she handed it to me and said, “This was our bible, besides, of course The Bible.”

Indeed, Living the Good Life had been the bible for the entire Back to the Land Movement that began in the 1930s and peaked in the 1950s. The Nearings left New York City and farmed on rural land first in Vermont, then Maine. After their book came out, they developed a national following of people who moved out of the cities to get away from Post War crowding, industrialism, pollution and competition. Also, for the first time in history, the human psyche confronted the possibility of mass annihilation with the invention of the atomic bomb.

Like the Nearings, the Hydes endured exposure to a wide range of rural and wild conditions and predicaments. Mom and Dad were survivors and minimalists who conserved resources, energy and money. Dad either repaired or jury-rigged water lines, oil pumps, motors, batteries, light switches and everything else in the house and vehicles.

In 1962, the same year Rachel Carson released Silent Spring, the Sierra Club first introduced color to landscape photography with the release of In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World with color photographs by Eliot Porter and quotes from Henry David Thoreau and Island In Time: The Point Reyes Peninsula by Harold Gilliam with photographs by Philip Hyde. While In Wildness was a well-planned art book, Island In Time was a rush project for which David Brower chose Dad as photographer because Brower knew Dad could quickly get enough artistically interesting, yet documentary feeling images to put together a book that not only helped raise the funds necessary to buy the land to establish Point Reyes National Seashore before the developers could subdivide it, not to mention it shared the Point Reyes story with Congress and President John F. Kennedy, who finalized the Bill making it part of the national park system.

Iceberg, Snow Patches, Ellery Lake, Yosemite National Park, 1980

We immerse ourselves in monstrous feature films that drive our imaginations to places we could only imagine are found in fairy tails. Mountain ranges that are bleak, baron and leave a chill running down the spine, deserts where life seems unimaginable to exist, but the odd creature clings to life. Endless oceans either so calm motion is not even visible, or the other extreme of 100ft waves and driving rain with wind.

But what about the quaint, peaceful rolling green hills that are cultivated to perfection, where orchards can be found with lush trees bearing fruit. The view of soft mist from the mornings cool air and the meandering river gently pacing itself while fish rise to take the early morning insects. And cattle grazing creating the mowed lawns, whilst the hedges create the patchwork quilt landscape viewed from the hills. This can mean only one place, Tolkien's Shire in Lord Of The Rings. A place where the film starts it journey by showcasing the simple lives of the Hobbits. Was this a place created in his imagination, or is there more to the Shire than really meets the eye?

Imagine that one day, while out hiking alone, you come upon a peculiar device filled with little buttons and dials of different colours. Each one is labelled with something like “clouds, light angle, rain, light intensity, fog, etc.” After some experimentation, you realise that by pushing the buttons in different combinations, you are instantly able to command the weather, change the angle and warmth of the light, and even momentarily pause the movement of the sun. You now have full control over any scene you photograph and are able to create the “perfect” moment exactly as you envision it in your mind.

Your incredible photographs quickly gain you recognition as an artist. People are blown away by your work, and it spreads all around the world. Many of your peers accuse your photographs of being “fake,” but you quickly shut them down by easily providing proof that you have indeed captured everything in camera. Your photographs win competitions and receive many awards. It’s not long before you’re considered one of the best photographers in the world.

When you find something at which you have talent, you do that thing until your fingers bleed or your eyes pop out of your head. ~Stephen King

What is the Meaning of Life?

Ah - the ultimate question. The singular ask which has led to more wars, more conflict in the world than any other question man has ever conceived. What, my dear reader, is the meaning of life?

According to the most intelligent computer in the universe, "Deep Thought" (https://amzn.to/3BRYwAK), the answer is simply 42.

Perhaps a better question than this, however, is why we as a species are so overtly concerned with the meaning of our lives. Personally, I have never witnessed my dog attempting to figure out the meaning in life; nor do I believe a fish swims in its bowl, pondering how it arrived there, wondering why it exists in the first place. And yet we often find ourselves wondering these such questions, and more, all of which revolve around the meaning of our lives.

The disappointing reality is that we are but a blip in the cosmos, something which the universe will quickly forget even existed. To be blunt, it won't take long before most people in the world forget about your existence, even. Simply think about the millions of people who lived just a hundred years ago; save for a few who built a sort of legacy for themselves, their names are largely forgotten.

So, if this is the case and we are not living in some sort of simulation, what is the point of trying to find the meaning of life?

In one word: purpose.

By temperament, I am not unduly excitable and certainly not trigger-happy. I think twice before I shoot and very often do not shoot at all. By professional standards I do not waste a lot of film; but by the standards of many of my colleagues I probably miss quite a few of my opportunities. Still, the things I am after are not in a hurry as a rule.~ Bill Brandt

The late November sun poked through the clouds as it slipped closer to the horizon, bathing the river and islands in the warm evening light. As I was commenting to my wife on the beauty of the light, I noticed a half-rainbow opposite the setting sun, its one end disappearing below the water’s surface. Rainbows are not uncommon where I live, but the combination of the late afternoon light and the rainbow dipping into the river made it particularly beautiful. My wife said I should get a photo of it, so I pointed my two index fingers at each temple and said, “click.” She gave me a look that only wives can give an idiot husband. I had no desire to photograph the scene, content to witness and revel in the beauty unfolding before me. After several minutes it disappeared, but the memory of it is forever seared into my brain. What more could a photo of it have offered me? What would my motivation have been had I photographed it?

My photographic modus operandi isn’t quite fire & forget, but I’m generally more concerned with the next photograph than my last. In the vast majority of cases, I’m more interested with the process of making an image rather than the finished product. The latter is rarely more than an incomplete, imperfect witness to a very enjoyable experience outdoors. Even the chore of fighting gravity, dragging my slightly overweight frame and 20kgs of camera gear up a hill, seems worth it. More still, I love the challenge of working out how to squeeze some recalcitrant portion of reality into a frame, hopefully resulting in an attractive and intriguing photo. Whilst I quite often feel an initial satisfaction with the products of those exertions, few of the photographs still move me 30 days later, let alone after 365.

This review of my best twelve images of 2022, therefore, feels like a slightly strange exercise. However, I can see that it’s quite the rage; at this time of year, there are dozens of dozens in my social media feed. Ansel Adams famously wrote that twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop. Significant is obviously the key word here. I am the kind of person who feels Eeyore is dangerously over optimistic. So, hoping that I will make twelve notable images seems very ambitious.

Obviously, some images that I have made over four decades have a deeper significance for me, and I have returned to a few of these again and again. (There must be some reward, or I wouldn’t keep doing it!) Realistically, few of the images here will ever make it into the list of my career best. Does that matter? Not really, we can never know when that wonderful mix of opportunity and resonance with a subject will result in a truly great image. Nor is it up to us to say which images are genuinely significant. Other eyes and the lens of time must determine that. I am content that last year’s crop has provided some likely candidates for my (almost mythical!) third book.

Footnote: I didn’t make a photograph I liked in every month last year, so the images are only “more or less” arranged in month order…

Submerged

I love a chance discovery. Wandering across open moorland in Iceland, I came across this pebble. Sunlight through the ice had warmed the darker pebble enough for it to melt a little opening, like a present unwrapping itself.

After the Rain

Retreating rain clouds provided the intensity of colour and the soft sheen on the slate wall in this image from Dinorwic.

Flow

I am fascinated by the systems that work behind the scenes to generate surface appearance. In this case, the patterns in the sky and on the beach arise from different kinds of flow. The similarities are more than coincidental. Self-similarity is visually satisfying, so that helps to hook the viewer.

Time enough

The way the colours and quartz veins flow through the rock is the product of unimaginable pressure over millions of years. The sea has then eroded the surface into softly complementary forms, revealing a beauty that was born from deep time.

Oscillations

Intriguing forms can arise from finding the right balance between time and light. In this instance, I wanted to compare the straight reeds with their oscillating reflections. The key here was finding the right shutter speed.

Graffiti

Earthquakes in 2016 devastated several villages and towns on the border of Umbria and Marche in Italy. Many of these are still awaiting help for rebuilding. This graffiti covered door is in a ruined building in Castellucio.

Ode

A freeform poem in light and colour, with a nod towards Monet. (I hope!).

Bergs

Alexander Fleming said that “chance favoured the prepared mind”. It also favours those who’ve already set up to make a photo when the sun unexpectedly peeps through the clouds. It looks like a serene experience, but there was some frantic resetting of shutter speeds!

Panning for gold

The golden birch leaves gathered in this dark, algae coated bowl in the rocks looked like bright treasures to me. The title was suggested by a friend, Dave Mead, and it’s much better than my original. A good title should ideally be poetic and enrich the image. Mine was sadly pedestrian.

Sunfire

Standing in a goatherder’s barn in the Picos de Europa, I was drawn to the molten orange light that spilled around the pantiles on the roof above. It looked as if they were being consumed by a furnace. The cool shades of the roof timbers also contrasted beautifully.

Fractured

It’s perhaps an indelicate subject, but I have often found compositions whilst obeying a call of nature. On this occasion, this recently fractured slate caught my eye. I was drawn by the combination of geometry and colour. It reminded me of abstract paintings from the early 20th Century. I also liked how fresh it seemed; the colours were very vibrant and broken piece close to its original position.

Vase

Spoil from the nearby slate mine at Ballachulish has been scattered across the beach. I noticed that, serendipitously, time and tide had rearranged these few stones into a shape reminiscent of a vase with seaweed growing in just the right position. All it took was forty minutes of searching through the chaos before I recognised the pattern within.

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.~ Albert Einstein

In his book, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche described three “metamorphoses of the spirit”—stages of personal development that people may (if they choose) pursue if they wish to live their lives to the fullest, which, according to Nietzsche, means living according to one’s own values with the greatest degree of freedom. Nietzsche described the three stages as analogous to adopting the attitudes of a camel, a lion, or a child.

The pursuit of freedom to live according to one’s own values, Nietzsche conceded, is not easy. It may involve taking great risks and the will to accept their consequences, whether good or bad (an attitude he referred to in his autobiographical book, Ecce Homo, as “amor fati”—love your fate). In his book, The Gay Science, Nietzsche wrote emphatically: “For believe me!—the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously!”

The Camel

According to Nietzsche, most people go about life with the attitude of a camel. A camel, by this analogy, is one who accepts its burden willingly and obediently, without complaint. Camels are strong and docile, willing to work hard and tackle difficult tasks when needed. A camel, wrote Nietzsche, “kneels down . . . wanting to be well loaded,” and, once loaded, has the fortitude and perseverance to “speed into the desert.” A camel accepts the burdens of life dutifully and unquestioningly. It does not lament its fate nor try to rebel or to fight for greater freedoms than are afforded it by its masters and peers. A camel wishes to be of service, to love and to help others. The camel is Nietzsche’s analogy for people who accept as given the burdens, responsibilities, and values imposed by their society and are willing to fulfil their predestined roles honourably and helpfully: people who are generous and would rather not “rock the boat,” who perform whatever labours are expected of them—even if difficult—to the best of their abilities.

The moment I open my tent door I am greeted by icy air. The leftover water in my jetboil from last night’s dinner has frozen solid and my boots are stiff as stone. I slide down into my warm cocoon, delaying my exit for as long as possible, with the hood of my sleeping bag cinched tight around my neck, not letting any of my precious heat escape. Eventually, my parched throat needs water. Without unzipping my bag, I wrestle my arms free and reach for my bottle right next to me, but it’s frozen solid. I’ll have to go filter some fresh water from the stream.

The sun has already risen but the land remains asleep. There is a quietness that feels as though I could reach out and touch it, perhaps also frozen solid during the long dark night. Now that I am up and out of my tent, I reach down to the bottom of my sleeping bag and pull out my warm water filter and camera batteries, putting them in my backpack along with the rest of my camera gear. I will go down to the nearby stream and see what marvels nature has created today.

The wide stream that was flowing the night before has come to a halt–winter’s imposing stillness–and continues to harden and solidify. I can see diagonal lines and triangular fractal patterns forming on its surface, multiplying and becoming more pronounced by the second. Drinking water is no longer of my immediate concern, I am spellbound as I watch nature create this remarkable scenery right before my eyes.

I pull out my camera and hop around from boulder to boulder, studying the different patterns and designs in the river of ice. I move swiftly, knowing that they will not last for long, but I don’t rush. The sun will eventually rise above the treeline behind me and return the stream to its liquid state. As I begin making photos, I can now hear the bugling of elk echoing through the mountain valley. Making their final attempts to attract a mate before the range is fully blanketed in snow. Technically it’s still fall, but up here at 11,000ft winter tends to make an early arrival.

The Natural Landscape Photography Awards are all wrapped up and I’m sitting here compiling the book to go with the 2022 results. I thought it would be interesting to recap on the process and show some of the winners and also some of my own personal favourites from our competition finalists.

Going into the competition this year, we weren’t certain of its success. We had done so well in the first year but we knew that there were many people who had entered to support the business but who might not become regular entrants. Fortunately, the idea of the competition seems to have gained some solid traction, and although were slightly under last year's submissions, it was only by a small fraction. We had nearly 11,000 photographs submitted from 1,200 photographers representing 55 countries. Due to our success in the first year, we were able to attract sponsors and prize money totalling nearly $40,000.

The Judging

Getting the entries is one thing, but honing these down to a smaller and smaller group until eventually choosing a single winner is another. I’ll give you a spoiler - ultimately, we couldn’t! More on that later though.

For the first round, we went through the images to filter out those that we knew wouldn’t be in the running for the winner of the competition. These were images that had fundamental flaws with composition, technique, etc. One the second run, we had a good idea of the quality of the top 10 or 20 percent of entries and so it became easily to eliminate those that were in the bottom 20-30 percent.

We managed this process by each of the organisers scoring every image and combining those scores together. Images that did consistently well across judges went through to the main judging and images that were a particular favourite of each judge automatically went through as well.

After reviewing the ‘borderline’ images manually to make sure we didn’t miss anything that may have interested the main judges, we compiled a set of images and sent them out to our eight judges.

The Judges

On our panel were a few judges from last year but the majority were new. Our panel was Sarah Marino, Alex Noriega, Sandra Bartocha, Paul Zizka, Orsolya Haarberg, David Thompson, David Clapp and Theo Bosboom. You can find out more about these judges on the NLPA website here.

These eight judges then had the task of reviewing all of these images and giving them a score. We used Lightroom for all of our judging, this allowed judges to go back and review scores and adjust things quickly. They can also zoom in and create panels of images to contrast and compare. Exporting the scores from Lightroom allowed us to compile them into small subset, from which we had a live meeting with all of the judges to pick their personal favourite images for each category. These sessions allowed the judges to get used to image choices and so be familiar with all of the images for the final, live judging round.

And this is where the final decisions get made and everybody’s subjective opinions on what should be the best images collides in an effort to come out with a single objective outcome.

You would think that there would be some general agreement in what makes the best photographs, especially when you get a range of people with a great deal of experience and visual vocabulary. However, art is ultimately subjective and the disagreements and discussions at this final stage of voting were extensive.

Fortunately, for most of the categories we were able to choose a first, second and third place. However, for the photograph of the year, we had a strong split between the four judges that no amount of discussion could break. As the images made a really strong pairing, we decided to try split the award between the two entries. You can see these two below from Jim Lamont and Philipp Jakesch.

Jim Lamont, Canada

The photograph shows the shadow cast by some peaks on the surface of the Lowell Glacier, in Kluane National Park, Yukon Territory, Canada. It was taken on a July morning in 2022 from a Cessna 172 as part of a decades-long project on glaciers. With climate change the Lowell Glacier, like most glaciers in the world, is crumbling into ruin, its surface gradually disappearing beneath dirt and rubble as the ice melts. The image is intended to suggest the wave of destruction that will overwhelm us unless we stop dumping carbon into the atmosphere.

Philipp Jakesch, US

When I decided to visit the volcanic site on the Reykjanes Peninsula, I was uncertain how it would be and how dangerous it was. Luckily we had good conditions and good filters to protect our lungs. The Image called "Ardor" is one of my favourite images from the volcanic series because of the small fragment of this huge area. The blue hour threw ambient blue light on the background layers, with the orange lava standing out even more. The 1,100°C hot liquid earth is frozen in time. Even though my distance to the erupting volcano was about 500 Meters, I could feel the radiating heat with every outbreak.

MAIN CATEGORIES

We changed our categories this year in order to try to differentiate between the intimate landscapes and grand scenics more clearly, and we also introduced an “Abstracts & Details” category, for those less representational and textural images.

Grand Scenic - Kevin Monahan

Our grand scenic winner wasn't an epic wide angle shot but it definitely worked under the "Grand" heading. The breaking mist on Chimney Rock in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness is sublime but it was the combination of this with the forested foreground that caught the judges interest. The layering effect of the long lens was used effectively to create something a little different and just the right moment of mist was chosen to enhance the final composition.

Kevin Monahan said “For many years I used to get so caught up in capturing the scene I originally had envisioned that I would miss all these other opportunities around me. Once I learned to let go of that, photography became so much more enjoyable and fulfilling.
For this backpacking trip in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness, one of the photographs I was hoping for was of these mountains reflecting in a calm alpine lake. After hiking 11 miles and climbing close to 5000 feet, I reached the top and realized the chances of capturing that were slim. We were engulfed in fog, couldn’t see anything around us, and there was too much wind.

Throughout the evening and entire night these mountains were hidden and no pictures were taken however during sunrise the clouds finally began to part, revealing these impressive peaks. I decided not to walk down to the lake but instead focus on these two mountains that really commanded the scene and my attention. The conditions were magical but quickly fleeting. Despite this being nothing I originally anticipated, I couldn’t have been happier photographing this scene out in the backcountry.”

Intimate Landscape - Spencer Cox

Our intimate landscape winner bucked the trend for photographs looking like watercolour paintings by looking more like a Romantic Era Oil Paining of a tree line and stormy sky. The elevetated view of the iron stained, turbulent river recalls Constable's expressive brush strokes and with an aged varnish effect to boot. It's the way the trees present themselves as viewed from the side, rather than above, which seals the illusion, for me anyway.

Spencer Cox said “When I first saw this scene, the warm, earthy tones of the riverbed reminded me of 19th-century landscape paintings. Even the fierce rapids of the Yellowstone River felt like gentle brushstrokes when viewed from afar.

I knew that I could play with scale and perspective when I composed this photo, as the trees appeared to stand against a cloudy sky rather than a swirling river. It can be a difficult photograph to parse without a second look.

This photo breaks many of the supposed ‘rules’ of landscape photography. It uses midday sunshine rather than Golden Hour light. The main subjects—the spindly trees along the riverbank—are at the bottom of the frame near the corner. And, to take the photo, I pointed straight downward from the edge of a canyon, not forward at a classic scene.

These unusual factors, though, are what give the photo its personality. I’ve always loved searching for offbeat, intimate views of nature like this wherever I go. It can be the best way to tell the story of a landscape.”

Abstracts & Details - Mieke Boynton

One of the standout images from the competition in my opinion, and of quite a lot of international press it seems (it featured pride of place in Der Spiegel print edition!), Mieke's aerial is more representational than abstract in presentation but it's the pareidolic effect which draws attention the most. The shape of the sandy beach and black steam bed broken by fresh sand, the promintory of a nose and black sand mouth builds the convincing shape of a serene female face.

Mieke Boynton said “This photo, "Ocean Deity", means so much to me. It was a gift. And she has a deeper meaning... if you look closely, her eyes have been "sewn shut" by tyre tracks. More than 6,000 marine turtles live in Gutharraguda/Shark Bay, including the globally endangered green turtle (Chelonia mydas) and loggerhead turtle (Caretta caretta). When people drive along the beach in 4WDs, they put the lives of turtles at risk, as this is where they nest.”

Some Personal Favourites

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks getting the bulk of our second book designed and I’d like to share a some of my favourite images from it. Apart from Brian Pollock’s photograph, which came first in the Frozen Worlds category and Eduardo Blanco Mendizaba, who came second in the Nightscape category, none of the other images placed. Hopefully you can see why the book is so important to us as there are so many other great images that wouldn’t get any exposure without it. It may take a lot of work but I think people enjoy it.

Our next book is being printed on the 15th of January and we’ll be taking discounted pre-orders in the new year (join our mailing list to keep updated). We’re using a printers near my parents home and I’ll be able to work on press during it’s printing. Joe Cornish, Alex Nail and others I know have used the printers so I’m very confident we’ll have a product ready to ship around mid-February. If you would like to see more images from the competition, take a look at the galleries at the Natural Landscape Awards website.

Lawrence Pallant

In a stunning example of complex composition, Lawrence has recognised the potential of a scene and found the perfect position that allows all of it’s elements to play a part in a coherent, if complex, whole. The key two trees in the centre, lean over the central smaller tree as if in a dance. The two smaller trees on the left bow in their presence. All of this would still appear off balance if it weren’t for the reaching arms of the maple on the far left. Even the right side is ‘closed’ nicely by the spiralling trunk of the last tree. And we haven’t even mentioned that glorious colour of sandstone, desert varnish and dogwood. A textbook example of resolving complexity

Eduardo Blanco Mendizaba

We presume that in order to enter the competition Eduardo must have survived his encounter with his volcano but the apparent proximity still leaves me in some doubt. The volcanic bombs spray like a fountain in front of the camera and the background littered like a aerial scene of a Dresden memory. It's the few stripped trees that give some sense of the epic scale of what we can see though. A truly sublime scene.

Andy MacDougal

Building an engaging wide panorama is not simple. To create something that moves beyond a literal snapshot requires that the photograph has multiple engaging components and then stitches them into a whole. Andy’s use of the visually intruiging circular melt holes in the snow covered ice is a great major theme linking the left and right sides. The sweep of the foreground closes the left corner. The promintory with a small bog myrtle bush and break in the ice crerates a focus mid point. The hollow of the glaciated valley behind the moorland finishes your journey across the picture.

Josh Glaister

Looking up through a wintery tree allows each branch to appear outlined in snow. The illusion separates and emphasises each stroke of a branch, creating a filigreed abstraction. The composition makes great use of this effect, the main branch boldly arching over the left and top and the smaller branches filling the spaces below.

Pete Hyde

Most of this photograph is playing a supporting role, a canvas onto which the frost limned hole through which a rich brown fern frond peeks. The fine needles of the hoar frost reach to close the gap, set off against the dark of the hole. The background isn't plain though, there's enough texture and pattern to keep our interest; an edge of ice sweeps left from the elliptical hole and larger frost needles grow above.

James Rodewald

The meaning of “Photography” is “Writing with Light” and what a brilliant example of that we have here. The reflection of what I think is the moon dances in the darkness, dragging a pyramidal light trail across the sensor. The top half of the image just about reveals the canvas to be the side of a flowing river. Amazing what you can do with a four year old phone camera (Galaxy S9)!

Louis Ouimet

It's often been said that you can consider a forest scene as an environmental portrait, imbuing the trees with an animus and interpreting their relationships as part of their expressive nature. Here we see a collection of aspen clustered together like penguins in the cool light of a snow storm. In reality, the aspen cluster because they are all a single organism, trunks sprouting from rhizomatic roots to help protect the whole against poor environmental conditions. Whichever story you read into a picture, it still needs to stand on it's aesthetics and this moodily lit, winter photograph does just that.

Jason Pettit

As the top, bleached layer of wood on this tree dries and shrinks, it cracks to reveal the richly coloured, fresh wood beneath. It's the sweeps and curves of the grain of the wood and the geometric cracking that create the visual intrigue though, an angular mandala.

Richard Fox

A simple scene of low, late winter sunlight striking across a misty tree clad hillside stands out because of the range of visual interest at play. The scene layers itself from open foreground to mist hidden far distance with rolling banks of trees hidding a disappearing as we move back in the frame. Each area holds something unique to linger on, from a small plantation to a partly seen farmhouse.

Mauro Tronto

This isolated patch of birch trees appears to have lost its leaves all at once, almost too many for that small group. Mauro has desaturated blues of the mist and background to enhance the autumnal colours but it’s the contrast of the intense yellow and black soil and rock that plays the main role.

Brian Pollock

If we wanted to be picky, there are a few ‘flaws’ in this composition; the band of hillside covers the mountains in the background; the foreground snow is ‘messy’; the main tree sits a bit too far to the right. This just proves that the whole is often more than its parts. This image just works, and works exceptionally well. The judges were entranced by the light on the main scots pine, intrigued by the glimpse of mountains beyond and drawn in by the natural balance of the composition.

Julien Parrot

A vast behemoth creeps out of the forest like an extra from Stranger Things. Julien's photograph makes a rare representation of the rainforest, as can be noitced from the palm trees at the bottom right. The success of the image comes from that theatrical lighting illuminating the old growth tree in the center of the image. The front limb looks to be stepping forward, about to push the triple limbed sapling aside.

David Kingham

With a flat, grey sky, many photographers might relax for the day - putting the urgency aside for a possible evening light show. But there's no such thing as bad light, even for the grand scenic genre. It does mean that your photo has to work even harder compositionally and that is what David's has done here. The bracketing right had aspens on a curved grassy bank; the sweep of conifer blending into more aspen on the left and behind the closest aspen sits the start of a bank of mountain range, rendered in subtle tans and pinks

Veronica Arcelus

The intensely rich, golden light on the trees in the background and bleached white of the trunks in the foreground suggest some dramatic post processing steps but the raw shows that this is just a case of a bit of added contrast to set off the beautifully composed, remarkable subject set off by that majestic lighting. The layering of the background as it transitions from groups of trees to illuminated tree tops and finally to the hillside of fully illuminated golden trees draws the eye through the background.

Lukas Moesch

Icicles can be fascinating subjects to photograph but they mostly confirm to a small range of shapes. Lukas' ice forms, folding and draping like cloth, intrigue us about their formation. The layer of hoar frost encasing them add to the textural richness. A mysterious and monochromatic still life image that keeps our interest.

Dorin Bofan

The variety of atmospheric optical phenomena make for a wide range of visually stunning apparations but they rarely make successful photographs. Dorin’s example certainly does though and it achieves this by being building a great photograph around the phenomenon first. The almost black tree clad cliffside acts as a strong vertical mirror to the intense subsun lower pillar, caused by the freezing fog. The dark wooded valley around the pillar makes a perfect frame.

Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalisation, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence. It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others, and is a condition which has a real opposite in the confused, dazed, scatterbrained state which . . . is called distraction.~ William James

All of us, I’m sure, would be upset if someone stole our belongings, invaded our private spaces, or siphoned away our hard-earned savings. Even the most generous among us, who give willingly to those in need (or just to make someone happy), who welcome visitors into our homes, who share our knowledge and art freely, insist on doing so by choice, not by leaving our doors open, allowing anyone to help themselves to our property and resources. Oddly, we consistently fail to exert such control and to protect ourselves from rampant theft when it comes to one of our most valuable possessions: our attention.

According to psychologist Darya L. Zabelina, citing a study by Michael Posner, “the main function of attention amounts to the selection of relevant information, and rejection of irrelevant information.” Paying attention is, therefore a process of distillation and simplification. The term “paying attention” is appropriate since attention is a finite and valuable resource. Our brains are limited in their capacity to generate attention—to select relevant highlights from the torrent of information generated by our minds and senses. The more attention we “spend” on one thing, the less of it we have left for other things. By the same analogy, paying is a conscious, willful act. When our resources are taken from us without our explicit consent, terms like stealing, hijacking, or sapping, may be more apt.