Each year, NATURE'S BEST® curates a photography competition that strives to celebrate the beauty and diversity of nature.
Their annual Windland Smith Rice International Awards uses photography to bring people together to celebrate the world in which we live and encourage greater public interest in enjoying the outdoors and conserving our natural resources for future generations.
This year, more than 26,000 photographs were submitted to the competition. Yesterday, the top 60 images were announced, some of which you can preview below.
If you're in the Washington, D.C. area, you can see these and other award-winning images in person at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.
The photos are on display on the second floor of the museum in large format prints up to 4 feet by 6 feet in size.
The prints are courtesy of Epson, who has been the exclusive printer and paper partner for the competition for seven years.
The images - coming from photographers in 59 countries - were printed using the Epson SureColor® P20000 64-inch wide-format printer for superb color, rich blacks, and long-lasting results.
In a press release, Steve Freligh, the awards director, noted that "Continuing our important mission to cultivate and encourage public interest in environmental conservation, we are proud to again represent and showcase the most incredible spectacles of nature through photography. Year after year, Epson’s reliable professional printing solutions allow us to display the best possible prints. And we are excited to once again see the winning photography on a larger scale with the projection mapping demonstration during the awards ceremony."
The projection mapping Mr. Freligh speaks of will debut at the invite-only awards ceremony on November 15, 2018, in the Rotunda of the Natural History Museum. The display is thanks to Epson's Pro L20000U laser projector which has 20,000 lumens of color and white brightness and its Pro L25000U laser projector with 25,000 lumens of color and white brightness.
For more details about NATURE'S BEST® Photography Awards, visit their website. To learn more about Epson's partnership with the Awards, click here.