27 National Geographic Photos - Award Winning Photography Examples

Every year National geographic conducts photography contests to motivate the amateur and professional wild life photographers. We have collected some of the best entries for the national geographic photos contest for your inspiration. These national geographic photos exhibit the photographer’s visual imagination and their creativity while taking these wild life photos. To become an amazing wildlife photographer one has to have the right angle, light, lens and lots of patience with creativity. Hope you like our collection of National Geographic Photos.

A supercell thunderstorm rolls across the Montana prairie at sunset. (Photo and caption by Sean Heavey)

Kanana Camp, Botswana. Pulling over by the side of the road to watch a grazing giraffe, we spotted an amber head lurking behind a small mound. A hungry lioness. Watching, waiting, camera to my eye, she eventually chose her moment and pounced just as the giraffe sensed danger. The lioness gave chase, but failed. Hungry, she lay down, invisible, in the grass not ten feet from us and waited again. (Photo and caption by Alex Tan)

Salvation. Appreciate life to save the world. (Photo and caption by Hongsik Kim)

The Great Pyramids. The people of Ancient Egypt believed that death on Earth was the start of a journey to the next world. The embalmed body of the King was entombed underneath or within the pyramid to protect it and allow his transformation and ascension to the afterlife. (Photo and caption by Jesus Oranday)

The Music Of Love. This picture was taken in Tenganan Village, Bali (2010). Tenganan is the most famous Bali Aga (original Balinese) village and is located close to Candi Dasa in East Bali. A man was playing bamboo music to entertain a disabled child which is not his son, but he loves this child likes he loves his own son. (Photo and caption by Ario Wibisono)

Liquid Planet. Another picture from the Liquid Vision Series, which shows a different point of view of waves. An angle that people are not used to seeing. (Photo and caption by Freddy Cerdeira)

Brown bear, Buskin River, Kodiak Alaska. This bear had been fishing in the river on this morning. It climbed onto the bank and laid down in the grass. This photo was taken about an hour after sunrise just as the sun was starting to clear the trees. The temperature was near the dew point and steam was rising off its body. It didn’t seem at all concerned by the fishermen in the river or the photographer on the bank. (Photo and caption by James Haskins)

Praying Mantis - Pseudocreobotra wahlbergii. This beautiful whalbergii evolved through two of its nymph-stages on the Barberton Daisy at left, surviving because of its bright color which blended so well with the flower. Towards the end of its growth into an adult, it became a little more adventurous (but not much more) as pictured here. Once it had shed the layer in this picture, it became a fully-fledged adult, and departed after about two weeks. Total stay in this tiny ecosystem was approximately six weeks. (Photo and caption by Fred Turck)

A Wrinkle in Time. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. (Photo and caption by Nikki Krecicki)

Alone. I was up in the air in an helicopter, taking images for the community and suddenly I saw one tree surrounded by thousands of spruces and I got only one shot in this perfect light. (Photo and caption by Mats Almlöf)

The archipelago of Fernando de Noronha, Brazil is considered a wildlife sanctuary, but today, even in this isolated archipelago dolphins are victims of the bad habits of consumption. (Photo and caption by João Vianna)

Cosmic. Mother nature doing what she does best. (Photo and caption by Patrick John O'Doherty)

Boise Sunrise. With the fog and morning light this looks like a place I'd love to be. If you look very closely, you can see a deer in a clearing in the center left area of the picture (small dot, head poking above bushes, see detail). (Photo and caption by Glen Hush)

Yes it's spring. Fishing on the end of the bridge. (Photo and caption by Stan Bouman)

The Look. There are only 400 of these birds in existence. (Photo and caption by Rolf Skrypzak)

Against the windstorm on Mont Blanc. My friend Laszlo Varkonyi is leading a group on Mont Blanc, he died on Everest this April in a fatal accident: a big serac fell down. (Photo and caption by Aniko Molnar)

Pure Elements. I drove my 4x4 over rivers to get a view of the Volcano eruption at "Fimmvorduhals" in Iceland. It was a full moon and strong winds gave me problems standing still outside the truck. I had my camera with me and zoom lens but no tripod, suddenly there was a magical moment, I was experiencing a display of nature rarely seen by man. I found my camera with the zoom lens, rushed out of the truck, trying to fight the strong wind. I pushed the camera on to the hood of the truck trying to stand still, holding my breath, I shot 30 frames, and only one shot was good. (Photo and caption by Olafur Ragnarsson)

The Serra da Leba Road near Lubango (Huíla, Angola). This is Serra da Leba, a landmark in Angola. A road built in the 70's, it's been in the country's postcard images for decades, but all shots were taken by day. I wanted something different and tried a night shot. But it seemed impossible: pitch dark, foggy, altitude of 1,800m (5,000ft). I wanted no more than 60sec of exposure, max, to avoid digital noise. But a car takes a few minutes to climb or descend this section of the road. The fog was dense and blocking the view! Suddenly the fog cleared, a few cars went down, others went up, they met in the middle in under 60sec... Painting done! (Photo and caption by Kostadin Luchansky)

Foot and Thistle, Mountain Gorilla of Rwanda. I was fortunate to visit the rare and endangered Mountain Gorillas in Rwanda, February of 2010. This young gorilla had fallen asleep with a thistle grasped in his foot. The thistle is one of their food sources. They learn to extract the pith from the spine-defended inedible stem. This particular gorilla demonstrates syndactyly of the third and fourth toes, a common congenital malformation also found in humans. (Photo and caption by Jim Edwards)

Oasis. (Photo and caption by Nam In Geun)

Me'enit Boy, Southwestern Ethiopia. One of our neighborhood friends, Sintiyu, looking on. A rare opportunity to see him undistracted by the camera, and absorbed in his family. (Photo and caption by Stephen Murdoch)

Suradita Village, West Java, Indonesia. Children playing with their roosters. Actually it was not a real cockfight because the roosters didn't wear blades on their feet. Children like to play this game because they almost never have toys in their life. (Photo and caption by Ario Wibisono)

Silhouetted against the headlights of their engine, Firemen attempt to put out a blaze caused by a gigantic natural gas line explosion near San Francisco in September of 2010. The fire destroyed 37 homes, and resulted in seven fatalities. (Photo and caption by Josh Edelson)

Great Blue Heron with fish. The largest and most widespread heron in North America. When foraging, they stand silently along riverbanks, lake shores, or in wet meadows, waiting for prey to come by, which they then strike with their bills. (Photo and caption by Linh Dinh)

Heavy load. One morning in August, I was on my way to pick up the newspaper. Everything was moist and wet, and I spotted this little fly on a small white flower, just outside my bedroom window. Two hours after I shot this picture I went outside again, and the fly was still sitting on the same flower - still not able to fly. (Photo and caption by Audun Wigen)

Giraffes at Savannah. Unusual perspective shot depicting two giraffes and a tree in Masai Mara, Kenya

Cloud and ship. Ukraine, Crimea, Black sea, view from Ai-Petri mountain. (Photo and caption by Yevgen Timashov.