Coinciding with the beginning of the Northern Lights season, travel photography blog Capture the Atlas has announced the winners in the 2022 Northern Lights Photographer of the Year award. Showcasing 25 awe-inspiring photographs of the Northern Lights (and a couple of the Southern Lights), the competition celebrates the beauty of the natural phenomenon.
The winning photographs were taken in countries around the world, including Canada, Finland, the United States, Iceland, Denmark and New Zealand.
The winners are chosen not only for the quality of the photographs, but also the stories behind the shots. Photographer Nico Rinaldi describes the area of Northern Russia where he captured ‘Polaris Dream’ as feeling like a “realm of snow monsters, in a landscape where the mountains and trees are dominated by ice and snow.”
Local New Zealand photographer, Douglas Thorne, originally set out to photograph the Milky Way but was blessed with seeing the Aurora Australis. “I arrived here early one autumn morning to capture the Milky Way rising above the lighthouse. It was an image that I’ve planned to capture for a long time. However, I was greeted by a surprise visitor. The Aurora Australis began to glow, its beams blooming over the ocean.”
See below a selection of the winning images. For the full collection, visit the Capture the Atlas website.
