The winning photos of this year’s Epson International Pano Awards highlight incredible vistas from Western Australia to Vietnam to Yellowstone National Park. The top prize was awarded to Hong Kong-based landscape photographer Kelvin Yuen for his remarkable image of a lightning bolt illuminating mountainous terrain.
Selected from more than 4,500 entries by hundreds of professional and amateur photographers, Yuen’s stunning drone shot captures the otherworldly atmosphere of a storm passing over Guilin, China.
“On the day I took this photo, I woke up at 3 a.m. and was supposed to hike up for the sunrise,” Yuen says. “However, a heavy thunderstorm struck out of nowhere… The drone surprised me by being functional after 30 minutes of downpour.” Yuen took 700 photos of the same composition, capturing lightning in 40.
The Pano Awards invites entries exploring the built environment and architecture in addition to nature and landscape. Prizes are presented in categories such as VR and 360-degree imagery, vertical format, aerial views, highest-scoring gigapixel image, digital post-processing, and more.
All images must adhere to a minimum aspect ratio of 2:1 to be eligible for consideration as a panorama. Open to historical and contemporary methods, the competition also allows digitally “stitched” images, such as Cassio Vasconcellos’s striking aerial views of disused airplanes and industrial sites, which are captured in numerous locations and superimposed.
Explore dozens more remarkable images in the winners’ gallery on the Pano Awards website, where entries for the 2025 contest are now open.
