Gullies formed by rainwater erosion span out like a tree on either side of a motorway in Tibet. This is the striking image by Li Ping, from China, who won the grand prize for the Nature Conservancy photography award this year. The photographer slept alone in a roadside car park overnight before using a drone in the early hours of the morning to capture this natural landscape. Images from all over the world make up the winners list, which is broken down into various categories including judges’ picks, Landscape, People and Nature, Climate, Water, Plants and Fungi, and Wildlife. The global photography competition this year received more than 100,000 submissions from 196 countries and territories. In Wildlife, Indian photographer Sandesh Kadur bagged first place, with his image <i>Lizards and Windmills</i>. A fan-throated lizard stands guard over his territory in one of the largest wind farms within the Chalkewadi plateau. Amish Jain, also from India, came in second place for the same category, for <i>Cleaning the Lakes</i>. It shows a person cleaning lakes of excessive sea vegetation owing to the hot climate, as well as waste being dumped into the waters. The winning images within the Water category are particularly striking, with Kristin Wright, from the US, taking first place for <i>Braided River</i>, a view of the longest river in Iceland showing brightly coloured sediment painting the landscape as it flows towards the ocean. Second place went to Nick Leopold Sordo, from Mexico, for Las Coloradas, Yucatan. Pink hues of the salt mines give a beautiful spin on one of the most important salt-generating plants in the country. Anup Shah, from the UK, won Wildlife with his shot of two lions. The image, called <i>Morani and Friend</i>, shows an older lion next to his youthful companion in Kenya’s Maasai Mara. “The old guy is one of the Four Musketeers that ruled Mara long time ago,” reads the description.
