This year’s winning photos Epson International Pano Awards highlights incredible vistas from Western Australia to Vietnam and Yellowstone National Park. The top prize was awarded to the 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 from hundreds of professional and amateur photographers, Yuen’s stunning drone shot captures the otherworldly atmosphere of a storm passing through Guilin, China.
“The day I took this photo, I woke up at 3 a.m. and was going to hike up for the sunrise,” says Yuen. “However, a heavy thunderstorm appeared out of nowhere… The drone surprised me because it was still functional after 30 minutes of downpour.” Yuen took 700 photos of the same composition and captured 40 lightning bolts.
The Pano Awards invite entries that explore the built environment and architecture in addition to nature and landscape. Prizes will be awarded in categories such as VR and 360-degree images, vertical format, aerial photography, highest scoring gigapixel images, digital post-processing and more.
All images must meet a minimum aspect ratio of 2:1 to qualify as a panorama. The competition is open to historical and contemporary methods and also allows for digitally ‘stitched’ images such as Cassio Vasconcellos‘s striking aerial photographs of disused aircraft and industrial sites, captured at numerous locations and overlaid.
Discover dozens more remarkable images in the Pano Awards winners gallery websitewhere entries for the 2025 competition are now open.
