Nature Photography How To

Mandy Lea is an American freelance photographer with a love of the great outdoors. She’s also a nomad of sorts, living and traveling in a stylish teardrop trailer as she searches for the majestic sights our country has to offer.

Photographers went to great depths to capture awe-inspiring images for the 2017 Underwater Photographer of the Year (UPY) Contest, and French shooter Gabriel Barathieu came out on top for the above image of what one judge called a “balletic and malevolent” dancing octopus. Barathieu made the image in shallow water under available light off the Island of Mayotte in South East Africa.

Sara Lee is an underwater photographer who became enchanted with the sea while growing up in Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii. She captured the dramatic images you see here of adventurer and freediver Alison Teal swimming with giant manta rays at night.

Hernando Rivera is a graphic designer and nature photographer living in Mexico, and he recently made a series of amazing photos of lightning striking lava that was spewing out of the Colima Volcano in Western Mexico near his home.

Every winter something enchanting happens on the Island of Hokkaido in Northern Japan when temperatures fall well below freezing. The Tokachi River freezes over, and what was once crystal clear water breaks up into diamond-like fragments of ice that wash ashore in a spectacle locals refer to as “jewelry ice.”

Jack Fusco is a nature photographer and professional musician who had a crazy idea: He wanted to capture a time-lapse of the night sky in Hawaii with molten lava flowing into the ocean. The amazing video below proves that his idea wasn’t so crazy after all.

Last May we reported on an unfortunate incident in which three photographers were taken into custody for walking on the Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park and waterskiing behind an RV on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. Now the three have been convicted with two of the bunch facing jail time.