The Natural Landscape Photography Awards (NLPA) has unveiled its 2025 winners — a celebration of in-camera skill and the quiet power of real places — chosen from over 11,000 entries by more than 1,100 photographers across 64 countries, with a strict rule against digital manipulation and AI-generated content and verification of finalists’ RAW files to protect the integrity of each scene.
Photographer of the Year Joy Kachina captured not only a winning image but the humility and joy that sit at the heart of landscape work. She wrote:
“I can hardly believe it—I just found out that I won this year’s NLPA Competition! I was simply hoping to be included in the NLPA Photobook, so this is such a wonderful surprise! I’ve always loved the NLPA Photo volumes and have taken them with me on many adventures in Tasmania. Being awarded Photographer of the Year by the Natural Landscape Photography Awards is such an honour, and I’m deeply touched by it.”
The Photograph of the Year winner, Margrit Schwarz, described how patience and intimacy with a place led to a deeply felt image from a twelve-day river trip:
“I am deeply honored to receive Photograph of the Year, and I thank the founders and judges for their dedication to this fantastic competition. It is a privilege to have my work recognized among so many exceptional photographs submitted and awarded this year. This image is a synthesis of my emotions and experiences during a twelve-day river trip deep inside the Grand Canyon. What moved me most were the hidden abstract forms shaped by stone, water, and time — details that spoke with as much power and mystery as the immense landscapes above.”
Winners across categories bring us close to the elements: Luis Vilariño, Grand Landscape awardee, invited viewers to feel the cold and the scale of ice-clad places in a photo that speaks of light, timing, and presence:
“As a photographer, I feel very fortunate when I return home with a photograph that captures that special moment, when the light and the landscape combine to create a unique scene. If, in addition, that image is recognized by leading photographers in a competition as demanding as the Natural Landscape Photography Awards, the joy is enormous. This award gives me the opportunity to share with many more people the same feelings I enjoyed in that magical moment. I hope you feel the cold biting your skin among gigantic blocks of ice in the depths of winter. Many thanks to the NLPA for striving to show Nature without additives, just as it is!”
And in the Intimate Landscape category, David Shaw’s win is a small, personal triumph born of many quiet walks and family patience:
“I’m absolutely thrilled to have won the Intimate Landscape category in the Natural Landscape Photography Awards. I’m especially grateful to the judges for appreciating the photo, and to my long suffering family for tolerating my Sunday woodland wanderings that led me to this image. It’s a real privilege to see my work alongside the other awarded photographers, and to be in such esteemed company. Thank you!”
Taken together, these voices and images remind us why people keep returning to wild places with a camera: not for instant viral moments but for the slow, generous work of noticing — light on stone, abstract forms shaped by time, and the intimacy of a woodland path. The NLPA’s commitment to authenticity — checking RAW files and excluding manipulated or AI-generated submissions — reinforces that these photographs are invitations to experience the world as it is, and to let that experience quietly transform us.
In a competitive year with thousands of entries from around the world, these winners offer a simple, uplifting message: careful attention, patience, and kindness — to the landscape and to one another — still yield moments of wonder worth sharing.
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