The Winners of National Geographic’s ‘Pictures of the Year’ Photo Contest

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The Winners of National Geographic’s ‘Pictures of the Year’ Photo Contest

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Sometimes a sleepless night is key to great photography. At approximately 3:40 a.m. on a frigid summer morning, photographer W. Kent Williamson snapped this image from Tipsoo Lake in Mount Rainier National Park, Washington.

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Heading home from an airport run one early October morning, photographer Tihomir Trichkov cut through North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Parkway and spotted the sun rising gently over the valley.

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Asiilbek, a nomadic Kazakh eagle hunter, preps his golden eagle, Burged, for a horseback hunt in the grasslands outside of Bayan-Ölgii, the westernmost province of Mongolia.

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Wildlife biologist Bruce Taubert was studying the eating habits of Arizona’s small desert owls when he got lucky: he found a rare screech owl next. For several nights, he photographed the owls carrying food back to their chicks using an infrared trip beam that triggers a high-speed flash.

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Maras in Peru. The archaeological record shows that salt extraction likely began here before the Inca Empire, perhaps as far back as 500 AD.

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On a road trip through the Austrian Alps, Alex Berger spotted a one-lane road that wound into the mountains and looped back on the map.