| 2015-10-calbuco-volcano-eruption-ngpc2015 | | Picture of the Calbuco volcano erupting in Chile | | After nearly five decades of inactivity, the Calbuco volcano in southern Chile spews a violent blast of ash and smoke, the energy generating a tangle of volcanic lightning. Situated along the Ring of Fire, Chile has a chain of about 2,000 volcanoes, most of which are dormant or extinct.
This photograph was submitted to the 2015 National Geographic Photo Contest. Submit your best photo for a chance to win.
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| 2015-9-xianggong-hill-china | | Picture of a light-filled valley taken from Xianggong Hill, China | | Early morning sunbeams pierce the clouds over a valley in Yangshuo County, China. Your Shot member Matthew Richardson captured the dramatic scene from his vantage point atop Xianggong Hill, just one of the many karst peaks that fill the region.
This photo was submitted to Your Shot, our storytelling community where members can take part in photo assignments, get expert feedback, be published, and more. Join now »
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| 2015-9-snow-spruce-norway-haarberg | | Picture of snow-covered Norway spruces in Sweden
| | Staggered by snow, Norway spruces bend with the weather in northern Sweden’s Laponia, one of the largest wilderness areas in Europe at 3,630 square miles. “Solitude and spectacle—that’s the essence of Laponia,” says John Utsi, a writer from the town of Jokkmokk.
See more pictures from the October 2015 feature story “Wild Heart of Sweden.”
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| 2015-9-labord-chameleon-ziegler | | Picture of a Labord’s chameleon on a branch, Madagascar | | A brightly hued Labord’s chameleon clings to a branch, standing in stark contrast to the surrounding dry brush. It’s a popular myth that chameleons take on the color of what they touch. Though some color changes do help them blend into their surroundings, the skin’s changing hue is in fact a physiological reaction that’s mostly for communication.
See more pictures from the September 2015 feature story “The Colorful Language of Chameleons.”
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| 2015-9-sidewalk-patterns-aerial | | Picture of patterns on a sidewalk seen from above, Tacoma, Washington | | When Your Shot member Larry Abraham grew bored with the photos he was capturing from a third-floor fire escape in Tacoma, Washington, he decided to change his perspective. Rather than look out, he looked down. “Color and pattern caught my eye,” he writes, “and I went to work.”
This photo was submitted to Your Shot, our storytelling community where members can take part in photo assignments, get expert feedback, be published, and more. Join now »
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| 2015-9-polar-bear-beechey-island | | Picture of a polar bear close to Beechey Island, Canada | | Passengers on a tour of the Northwest Passage boarded Zodiacs near Beechey Island, Canada, after hearing of a possible polar bear sighting—the first of the trip. “Our drivers maneuvered us [into] perfect positions to take pictures of the bear without stressing the animal,” writes Your Shot member Nina Stavlund. “You could feel the excitement, but everyone was very quiet.” With flowing adrenaline and a pounding heart—”This was, after all, my first polar bear in the wild”—Stavlund was shaking so much that she had to take a few deep breaths. “I made sure my shutter was fast and that I had a good exposure [so as] not to wash out the beautiful white coat. [When] the bear turned its head toward the sun, I saw a catch light in the eye and pressed the shutter until my buffer was full.”
This photo was submitted to Your Shot, our storytelling community where members can take part in photo assignments, get expert feedback, be published, and more. Join now »
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| 2015-9-mount-bromo-shadows | | Picture of Mount Bromo at sunrise | | Sunrise filtering through trees creates long shadows in East Java, Indonesia. Your Shot member Adl Chai captured this view from Mount Bromo, an active volcano and one of the country’s most iconic mountains.
Chai’s photo was recently featured in the Daily Dozen.
This photo was submitted to Your Shot, our storytelling community where members can take part in photo assignments, get expert feedback, be published, and more. Join now »
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| 2015-9-venice-beach-aerial | | Picture of a pier on Venice Beach, California
| | Your Shot community member Stephane Couture wanted to capture a new perspective on a familiar subject: this pier in Venice Beach, California, shot from above on a five-second exposure while illuminated by the headlights of a car. “My idea was to frame it with the shoreline to create this cross between the organic lines of the waves and the sand [and] the sharp, man-made lines of the pier,” he writes. “I love the double take viewers do when encountering this image for the first time. It usually takes a few seconds for them to really understand what they are seeing.”
This photo was submitted to Your Shot, our storytelling community where members can take part in photo assignments, get expert feedback, be published, and more. Join now »
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| 2015-9-woman-fish-indonesia | | Picture of a woman selling fish in Indonesia
| | In order to compose this image of a woman arranging fish to dry in the coastal village of Sawah Luhur, Indonesia, Your Shot member Victor Djaja took a physical approach to capturing the shock of red from above—raising the camera as high above his head as possible.
This photo was submitted to Your Shot, our storytelling community where members can take part in photo assignments, get expert feedback, be published, and more. Join now »
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| 2015-9-vermilion-lakes-sunrise | | Picture of Vermilion Lakes outside of Banff, Canada | | A dense fog was covering Vermilion Lakes, just outside of Banff, Canada, when Your Shot member Vitali Hantsevich arrived at 5 a.m. in search of a good sunrise shot. “The visibility was so low that I even decided not to take my camera and tripod out of the backpack,” he writes. He was about to return to his car when the fog lifted to reveal this view of the lake with Mount Rundle in the background. “I was so afraid that this magical light would disappear as rapidly as it came that I started shooting with a yellow-blue polarizer, which I had used the evening before and which was still attached to the lens. The polarizer added a maroon color to the image.”
This photo was submitted to Your Shot, our storytelling community where members can take part in photo assignments, get expert feedback, be published, and more. Join now »
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| 2015-9-morning-van-mongolia | | Picture of men in a van in the early morning | | While traveling in western Mongolia’s Khovd Province, Your Shot member Terry Allen eagerly set out from her shabby hotel to capture sunrise shots in the Altay Mountains. “I had just set up my tripod in the predawn, and I glanced over at our van and saw the guys had the light on inside and were steaming it up making coffee,” she writes. “As an added touch, one of them had left his tripod set up outside the van. I framed the shot to include the indigo sky and the mountains and shot several frames until the windows fogged up completely.”
This photo was submitted to Your Shot, our storytelling community where members can take part in photo assignments, get expert feedback, be published, and more. Join now »
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| 2015-9-street-painting-florence | | Picture of a street artist in Florence, Italy
| | A street artist re-creates Raphael’s “La Fornarina,” or “Portrait of a Young Woman,” in chalk on the sidewalks of Florence, a common canvas for serious and whimsical nods to the Italian masters. Margherita Luti, depicted in the portrait, was a baker’s daughter from Trastevere and mistress of the Renaissance painter. The original work is housed in Rome’s Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica.
Butuzov’s photo was recently featured in the Daily Dozen.
This photo was submitted to Your Shot, our storytelling community where members can take part in photo assignments, get expert feedback, be published, and more. Join now »
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| 2015-9-red-fox-estonia | | Picture of a red fox in Estonia | | Emerging from its den in southern Estonia, a fox kit appears to weigh the presence of Your Shot member Kalmer Lehepuu’s camera lens. The photographer had waited for the kits to grow big enough to start leaving the den, and it was on one beautiful evening, he writes, that the mother went to get food and left the kits on their own, letting Lehepuu sneak closer to observe them.
Lehepuu’s photo was recently featured in the Daily Dozen.
This photo was submitted to Your Shot, our storytelling community where members can take part in photo assignments, get expert feedback, be published, and more. Join now »
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| 2015-9-tree-dunes-namib-desert | | Picture of a tree in the Namib desert | | “Truly, nature is the best painter,” says Stas Bartnikas, a Your Shot community member. Bartnikas had flown over the Namib Desert during sunrise and sunset and noticed that the color of the dunes heavily depended on the angle of the sunlight and the point of view, with colors changing and unusual pictures and patterns emerging. As it turned out, he writes, the effect can also be observed from the ground. He took this photo while riding through Namib-Naukluft National Park one morning. “The dune behind the tree looked very unreal,” he writes, “like clouds or something else, because of [the] special angle of the sunlight.” He had only five minutes to photograph—after that, the effect disappeared.
Bartnikas’s photo was submitted to the Undiscovered assignment on Your Shot. Your Shot is our storytelling community where members can take part in photo assignments, get expert feedback, be published, and more. Join now »
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| 2015-9-diving-pelican-jurong-park | | Picture of a pelican diving during a feeding session, Jurong Bird Park
| | A pelican dives for fish during a feeding session at Jurong Bird Park in Singapore. Nikhil Rasiwasia’s hopes for capturing the birds in good light was lost when it began drizzling, so the Your Shot member focused on the feeding finale, when fish that had been thrown in the air were tossed in the water instead. “The moment came all of a sudden,” Rasiwasia writes, noting that the timing of the shot captured the pelican’s pouch completely filled with water.
Rasiwasia’s photo was recently featured in the Daily Dozen.
This photo was submitted to Your Shot, our storytelling community where members can take part in photo assignments, get expert feedback, be published, and more. Join now »
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| 2015-9-beachgoers-shadows-montauk | | Picture of beachgoers from above in Montauk, Long Island
| | Long interested in aerial photography, Your Shot member Clayton Harper used a small-scale unmanned aerial craft to capture this vantage of him and his wife at sunset in Montauk, New York. Harper had been waiting for optimal lighting and shadows for other photos when he decided to use the time and equipment to try something new. At the time, his wife was expecting their first child. “I was instantaneously drawn to this new perspective of the relationships between me and my wife, our unborn child, and the earth,” he writes. “In this moment, I saw the forces of our anxiety of the unknown and the excitement of our new baby through the environment we were in.”
Harper’s photo was submitted to the From Above assignment on Your Shot. Your Shot is our storytelling community where members can take part in photo assignments, get expert feedback, be published, and more. Join now »
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| 2015-9-coastal-wolves-nicklen | | Picture of a pair of young wolves living along the Pacific coast of Canada | | At Canada’s western edge, beachcombing wolves swim between islands, eating whatever the sea serves up. Relatives babysit youngsters such as these at rendezvous sites, and their parents bring them food until they’re old enough to hunt—and beachcomb—with the pack. Coastal wolves can get as much as 90 percent of their food from the sea.
See more pictures from the October 2015 feature story “Sea Wolves.”
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| 2015-9-rapa-valley-sweden-haarberg | | Picture of an autumn storm sweeping across the Rapa Valley, Laponia, Sweden
| | An autumn storm sweeps dramatically into the Rapa Valley in Sweden’s vast Laponia region, spotlighting Mount Nammatj. Like much of Laponia’s rugged, primordial landscape, the peak has been sculpted by glaciers.
See more pictures from the October 2015 feature story “Wild Heart of Sweden.”
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