Lau and his travel companions were returning to the hotel for breakfast when they passed a group of riders who were demonstrating their skills on horseback.
“The snow was getting heavier, the wind was getting stronger, and the light was moving away from its optimal position. I knew I only had a couple of shots’ worth of time to get the best out of this encounter. With a bit of luck, one of my final attempts managed to capture the moment when one of the riders charged out from the morning mist along with his horses,” explained Lau. At temperatures of minus twenty, with constant wind, it was very difficult to even take a photo. But he did it.
The traditional competition of the renowned magazine received as many as 10,000 photos. From hidden ponds in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, to the storms in George Town in Malaysia. The finalists of this year’s National Geographic Travel Photographer of the Year contest showed the most distant places and destinations around the world. They spent months traveling around the world to capture the extreme differences in cultures and the environment and ensure their place in the finals.
Among the photographs that stood out was a simple photo of two foxes chasing each other through a snowy landscape at dawn, and an action shot of an alligator who caught a fish for a meal, and the fish was already eating another fish for a dinner.
But competition was not focused only on images from the wild. There were excellent photos showing New York’s Central Park, as well as those of Indian families sleeping on their rooftops in Varanasi.
Since this is a prestigious photographic competition at the global level, to be among the best is already a prize in itself, but winners also received some awards – the winner for example was given a 7-day photo safari for two among polar bears.
