EVERY YEAR PHOTOGRAPHERS from around the globe enter the National Geographic Photo Contest.
Official categories are People, Places, and Nature, with 13 winners announced today. The grand prize went to James Smart, from Australia, for his shot of a tornado in action in Colorado in the US. Smart also won in the Nature category.
(ABOVE: Nature Winner Photo ‘Dirt’: Jaw-dropping, rare anti-cyclonic tornado tracks in open farm land narrowly missing a home near Simla, Colorado.)
The other winners include Joel Nsadha of Binghamton, New York, who was placed first in the People category for a portrait of a young man on his cherished bicycle in a slum in Uganda.
(ABOVE: “At The Play Ground”: Bwengye lives in a slum called Kamwokya in Kampala, Uganda’s capital city. He cherishes his bicycle more than anything else. He brings it to this playground in the slum every evening where he watches kids playing soccer. Location: Kampala, Central Region, Uganda.)
Francisco Mingorance of Andalusia, Spain, won in the Places category for his photo of a marsh in Spain that has been partially destroyed by radioactive waste.
(ABOVE: “Asteroid”: On the occasion of the preparation of a report on Ríotinto from the air, I decided to include phosphogypsum ponds located in the marshes of red and whose radioactive discharges has destroyed part of the marsh. As an environmental photojournalist had to tell this story and report it, but had to do with an image that by itself attract attention of the viewer. I discovered this on a low-flying training that caught my attention for its resemblance to the impact of an asteroid on its green waters. Location: Cardeñas, Andalusia, Spain.)
Other photographers with honourable mentions are:
“Colorful chaos”: White-fronted Bee-eaters getting together on a bough before going to sleep to their burrows, scraped into a sand wall. I was working on this theme for 18 days, as there were only 5-10 minutes a day, when the light conditions were appropriate, 90% of my trying did not succeed. I used flash lights to light only the ones sitting on the branch, and not to the others, flying above. When in the right angle, the backlight generated rainbow colouring through the wings of the flying birds. Location: Mkuze, KwaZulu-Natal, South AfricaSource: Photo and caption by Bence Mate/ National Geographic 2015 Photo Contest 
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say