Nature rarely poses on command. Lions do not check whether the light is flattering, storms ignore carefully prepared shooting schedules, and frogs have absolutely no respect for autofocus. That unpredictability is exactly what makes the winning photographs from AAP Magazine #33: Nature so compelling.

Announced by All About Photo on August 28, 2023, the collection honored 24 photographers from 11 countries across three continents. Their work stretches far beyond conventional wildlife portraits and postcard landscapes. The selected projects include infrared animals, cameraless botanical images, embroidered photographs, desert storms, underwater plastic creatures, aging leaves, and deeply personal visual stories. The top three photographers shared $1,000 in cash prizes, while all selected work was published in the print edition and displayed in the magazine’s winners gallery.

A Nature Photography Contest With a Wider View

The strongest feature of this AAP Magazine nature contest is its refusal to define nature too narrowly. Yes, there are dramatic animals and magnificent landscapes. But there are also photographs about grief, illness, memory, pollution, migration, climate anxiety, and humanity’s complicated relationship with the environment.

Some photographers document the natural world as it appears. Others transform it through infrared light, historical printing processes, digital blending, embroidery, or abstraction. The result feels less like a stack of calendar images and more like a lively conversation among science, art, conservation, and personal experience.

Nature is beautiful here, but it is not merely decorative. It is vulnerable, strange, comforting, intimidating, and occasionally dressed like it has arrived early for an intergalactic fashion show.

The Top Three Winners of AAP Magazine #33: Nature

First Place: “Golden Headed Langur” by Thomas Vijayan

Canadian photographer Thomas Vijayan earned first place with a portrait of a golden-headed langur, also known as the Cat Ba langur. Vijayan captured the animal while traveling by boat in Vietnam. Its bright crown, dark face, and remarkably expressive gaze give it an almost royal presence, as though it has paused a cabinet meeting to inspect the photographer.

The charm of the portrait is inseparable from the animal’s precarious situation. The Cat Ba langur is endemic to Vietnam’s Cát Bà Island and remains critically endangered. The caption published with the contest described a surviving population of only 65 to 67 animals at the time the image was submitted. Conservation estimates can vary as monitoring continues, but the species remains among the world’s rarest primates.

Vijayan’s photograph succeeds because it does not resemble a clinical record of an endangered species. It creates a direct encounter. The langur looks alert, intelligent, and individual. Instead of asking viewers to care about an abstract population statistic, the image introduces them to one unforgettable face.

Second Place: “Gathering” by Teri Figliuzzi

Second-place winner Teri Figliuzzi approached nature without relying on a conventional landscape or wildlife camera. Her ongoing series Gathering uses phytograms, an alternative process in which plant-based materials help develop images directly on film.

Botanicals become both subject and collaborator. Leaves, flowers, seaweed, and organic matter influence the final marks, giving the work a tactile, handmade quality. Figliuzzi also incorporates materials such as vellum, gold leaf, and silver leaf, bringing her background in textiles into the photographic process. Her images focus attention on overlooked, fragile, and discarded stages of natural life.

The work belongs to a long history of cameraless botanical photography. Nineteenth-century pioneers placed plant specimens directly onto sensitized paper to produce photograms and cyanotypes. Figliuzzi extends that tradition by allowing plant chemistry itself to participate in image-making. Nature is not just standing in front of the camera; it has sneaked into the darkroom and started pressing buttons.

Third Place: “Sanctuary in the Wild” by Christina McFaul

Christina McFaul’s third-place series explores the connection between childhood, freedom, and untamed environments. Raised near a lake in California’s Santa Monica Mountains, McFaul developed an early attachment to outdoor spaces. In Sanctuary in the Wild, she combines portraiture, landscape, and still-life photography to recreate that feeling of discovery.

One selected image, titled “Unfurling,” merges the human figure with organic forms. The alignment feels deliberate without becoming stiff. Rather than showing people as visitors to nature, McFaul presents them as participants within it.

The series also offers a quieter kind of environmental message. Conservation is not presented through devastation alone. It grows from affection, memory, play, and the knowledge that people are more likely to protect places they have learned to love.

Twenty-One More Winning Images Worth Exploring

4. “Young Lion, Ngorongoro, Tanzania” by Paolo Ameli

Part of Ameli’s Infrared African Wildlife series, this portrait gives a young lion an ethereal appearance. Infrared black-and-white photography transforms familiar grasses, fur, and skies into pale, dreamlike forms. The lion is still recognizably wild, but the altered spectrum makes the scene feel as though it belongs to another planetor at least to Earth after someone changed the visual settings.

5. “Colourful Sunrise in Patagonia” by Carmen Villar

Villar photographed lenticular clouds glowing above Torres del Paine before sunrise. A river below reflects the colored sky, creating a visual pathway through the composition. The picture demonstrates why landscape photographers often begin working while sensible people are still negotiating with their alarm clocks.

6. “Hydrothermal Basin, Wyoming” by Nathan Rochefort

Rochefort’s false-color infrared image turns fumaroles at Yellowstone’s Norris Geyser Basin into an abstract field of heat, vapor, and texture. Yellowstone contains more than 10,000 hydrothermal features, and photographing them demands both creative curiosity and strict respect for park rules. Visitors must remain on boardwalks because apparently solid ground may conceal dangerously hot water.

7. “Ready to Jump” by Pablo Trilles Farrington

A red-eyed tree frog appears balanced between stillness and motion in this Costa Rican wildlife photograph. The frog’s brilliant eyes, blue side markings, and almost polished skin look unreal, yet that visual extravagance comes standard from natureno premium subscription required.

8. “Groom With a View” by Turgay Uzer

Uzer photographed a gelada in Ethiopia’s Simien Mountains as part of his series Here Today, Gone Tomorrow. The animal’s windswept mane and elevated position create a humorous resemblance to a traveler admiring the scenery. Beneath that wit is a serious concern about disappearing habitats and the increasingly fragile future of wild species.

9. “Buttercups” by Diane Hemingway

Hemingway’s The Wild Cosmos developed from profound personal loss. Flowers, fields, mist, and darkness become emotional landscapes through which the photographer explores memory and survival. “Buttercups” is not simply a floral study; it suggests that nature can hold grief without attempting to explain it.

10. “Merzouga” by Olivier Unia

When a sudden storm struck near Morocco’s Sahara Desert, most people ran for shelter. Unia ran for his camera. The resulting photograph captures a brief collision of wind, sand, human presence, and enormous scale. It is a useful reminder that dramatic landscape photography often begins when the weather app has officially given up.

11. “Entwined” by Jo Fields

Five nonvenomous snakes emerged from hibernation and arranged themselves among roadside branches. While other walkers hurried away, Fields responded with curiosity. The intertwined bodies form an almost decorative pattern, challenging viewers to look beyond an instinctive fear of snakes and appreciate their form and behavior.

12. “Gucci” by Lev L Spiro

From the series Night Creatures, “Gucci” transforms an ordinary garden plant into a mysterious character. Dramatic lighting makes leaves appear animated, social, and perhaps slightly judgmental. Spiro’s botanical portraits invite viewers to imagine plants as beings with moods, relationships, and very strong opinions about lawn furniture.

13. “Color Poppies IV” by Jean Karotkin

Karotkin’s floral image belongs to a series named after Erik Satie’s Gymnopédies. Instead of presenting flowers in cheerful, conventional perfection, the photograph emphasizes gesture, rhythm, and atmosphere. The poppies seem less like specimens and more like notes drifting through a quiet musical composition.

14. “Southern Magnolia 2023” by Diana Bloomfield

Bloomfield created this botanical image using tricolor gum bichromate layered over a cyanotype print. The handmade process produces softness, texture, and subtle irregularities that digital perfection often removes. Her series The Old Garden connects her own garden with memories of her grandmother’s Southern urban garden.

15. “Untitled” From “A Passing” by Calli McCaw

McCaw digitally blends photographic imagery with gold leaf to address society’s reluctance to recognize the worsening signs of climate change. Gold traditionally suggests preciousness and permanence. Here it also creates tension, decorating a world whose environmental stability is anything but guaranteed.

16. “Modern Rabbit Underwater” by Alexej Sachov

Sachov’s eerie underwater scene places a plastic rabbit among suspended particles and plankton. The fabricated animal represents a possible future in which manufactured objects outlast the species they imitate. It is playful at first glance, then increasingly uncomfortablethe photographic equivalent of discovering that the cute toy in the bathtub has brought an environmental manifesto.

17. “Poetry of a Leaf” by Jacqui Turner

After her mother’s death, Turner became fascinated by aging leaves in her backyard. Their folds, veins, cracks, and curled edges began to resemble skin, leather, flesh, and bone. By photographing decay closely, she reveals that natural beauty does not disappear when freshness does; it changes vocabulary.

18. “Vigilant” by Gulgun Gunal

Gunal’s work examines the boundary between human presence and the natural environment. Photographed among Sardinia’s volcanic rocks, the selected scene includes geological forms, distant figures, and subtle evidence of human intervention. The composition encourages viewers to search slowly and consider whether humanity is observing nature, entering it, or quietly rearranging it.

19. “Sweet Gum Embroidered” by Myrtie Cope

Cope adds French-knot embroidery to a sepia-toned photograph of sweet gum branches. The stitched knots resemble the tree’s spiky seedpods, giving the flat photograph physical texture. By combining photography with thread, she asks viewers to look more carefully at botanical details that are usually passed at walking speed.

20. “From the Inside” by Stéphane Garnavault

Garnavault uses flowers, blur, light, and abstraction as tools for introspection. Rather than documenting a plant with scientific clarity, the photograph becomes a visual self-portrait. Detailed areas emerge from softness, producing the sensation of a memory trying to bring itself into focus.

21. “A Drop of Silence” by Francisco Gonzalez Camacho

Created in Finland as part of the series Elsewhere, this infrared landscape explores immigration, displacement, and isolation. Camacho treats nature as a place of emotional relief and renewed belonging. The altered tones suspend the scene between reality and imagination, making the landscape feel simultaneously distant and intimate.

22. “Dream Along” by Thaddäus Biberauer

Biberauer travels through Europe using different techniques to create an emotional, dreamlike interpretation of natural environments. “Dream Along” prioritizes atmosphere over geographic explanation. It does not simply tell viewers where they are; it asks where the image takes them.

23. “Untitled 6201, 2021” by Torrance York

York’s Semaphore series uses natural forms as metaphors for living with Parkinson’s disease. The photograph addresses vulnerability, bodily change, and fear without becoming literal. Nature provides a language for experiences that can be difficult to communicate directly.

24. “Tendril” by Kelly O’Leary

O’Leary’s close observation of a twisting tendril celebrates forms that are tiny, temporary, and usually overlooked. The photograph makes a botanical structure feel like both sculpture and handwriting. Nature, it suggests, has been quietly producing elegant calligraphy while the rest of us were busy checking notifications.

What These Winning Nature Photos Have in Common

The images differ radically in subject and technique, yet several ideas connect them. First, the photographers look beyond obvious beauty. Dead leaves, plastic waste, fog, illness, grief, and fragile organisms receive the same attention as lions and spectacular sunrises.

Second, many of the projects depend on patience rather than expensive equipment alone. The decisive skill is recognizing when weather, behavior, light, texture, and emotion briefly align. Cameras record the moment, but attention discovers it.

Finally, the collection treats responsible photography as part of the creative process. Ethical wildlife photographers put the welfare of animals and habitats ahead of obtaining a dramatic image. That means maintaining distance, avoiding disturbance, respecting protected areas, and refusing to manipulate an animal’s behavior merely for a cleaner composition. The best photograph is never worth harming its subject.

Experiencing the Collection: Lessons for Viewers and Photographers

Viewing these 24 photographs slowly creates a very different experience from flicking through a typical social media feed. At first, the dramatic subjects naturally take control. The golden-headed langur makes eye contact. The young lion glows in infrared. Patagonia pours color across the screen like the sky has knocked over an entire paint box. These are the photographs that stop the thumb immediately.

But after the initial spectacle, the quieter images begin to gain power. A dried leaf becomes a record of mourning. A tendril becomes sculpture. A flower turns into a psychological portrait. An embroidered photograph asks the viewer to think about touch, patience, and the physical construction of an image. The collection rewards a second look because many of its strongest details do not announce themselves with fireworks and a marching band.

For photographers, the gallery offers an important practical lesson: memorable nature photography does not require traveling to the farthest location on Earth. Some winning projects were created in gardens, backyards, or familiar landscapes. Access matters less than attention. A photographer who studies the same tree through four seasons may discover more meaningful work than someone who races through six national parks while photographing only the scenic overlooks.

Field experience also teaches that planning and improvisation must coexist. Landscape photographers may research sunrise direction, weather, tides, trails, and seasonal conditions, only to arrive and discover that the clouds have ignored the spreadsheet. Wildlife photographers can wait quietly for hours while the intended subject remains behind a bush, apparently reviewing the terms of its modeling contract. The useful response is not frustration but awareness. Another subject, pattern, reflection, or behavior may be unfolding nearby.

Respect is equally important. A telephoto lens should replace physical intrusion. Sensitive locations should not be trampled for a more dramatic angle. Nesting animals, resting wildlife, and fragile plants should never be disturbed for an image. Photographers should also think carefully before publicly sharing precise locations of rare species. Responsible practice may produce fewer photographs in the moment, but it protects the possibility of making photographs in the future.

The collection also encourages experimentation after the shutter is pressedor even without a conventional shutter at all. Infrared capture, phytograms, cyanotypes, gum bichromate printing, digital gold leaf, and embroidery show that nature photography can be documentary, interpretive, or tactile. Technique becomes meaningful when it supports the idea. An unusual process should not function like a party hat placed on an otherwise ordinary image; it should deepen the story.

Most of all, these photographs demonstrate the value of developing a personal relationship with a subject. The winning images are not merely “about nature.” They are about what nature means to each photographer: refuge, warning, memory, mystery, grief, resilience, or delight. That personal layer is what transforms a visually attractive scene into a photograph capable of staying in the viewer’s mind long after the gallery closes.

Conclusion

The winners of AAP Magazine #33: Nature prove that nature photography remains one of the most flexible and emotionally powerful forms of visual storytelling. Thomas Vijayan’s rare langur portrait creates an immediate conservation connection, while Teri Figliuzzi and Christina McFaul show that nature can be explored through handmade processes, family memory, and intimate symbolism.

Across the complete selection, animals, landscapes, plants, weather, personal histories, and environmental concerns overlap. Some photographs astonish instantly. Others unfold gradually. Together, they encourage viewers to notice more, rush less, and recognize that the natural world is not merely a background for human life. It is the living system that makes human life possibleand, thankfully, it remains a much more imaginative artist than most of us.

Note: This article covers AAP Magazine #33: Nature, whose winners were officially announced on August 28, 2023. Photograph titles and artist credits are based on the official All About Photo presentation; all image copyrights remain with their respective photographers.