winners/entries for NG Nature Photo of the Year ...

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Grand prize winner Sardine Run: During the sardine migration along the Wild Coast of South Africa, millions of sardines are preyed upon by marine predators such as dolphins, marine birds, sharks, whales, penguins, sailfishes, and sea lions. The hunt begins with common dolphins that have developed special hunting techniques to create and drive bait balls to the surface. In recent years, probably due to overfishing and climate change, the annual sardine run has become more and more unpredictable. It took me two weeks to have the opportunity to witness and capture this marine predation.

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Second place winner, Action Approach: An EF2 tornado bears down on a home in Wray, Colorado — May 7, 2016. As soon as we were safe, as the tornado roared off into the distance through a field before roping out, we scrambled up the hill to check on the residents.Thankfully, everyone was all right, and we were grateful for that. As I was checking in with a young woman coming out of the basement, we became very aware of a strong new circulation — right above our heads.

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Third place winner, Landscape Pacific Storm: A colossal Cumulonimbus flashes over the Pacific Ocean as we circle around it at 37000 feet en route to South America.

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Honorable mention, Landscape Serendipitous Green Meteor: This green meteor was captured while taking a time-lapse to document the urbanization around the Skyislands in India. The camera was set at 15s exposure for 999 shots and this came into one of those shots. Green Meteor’s greenish color come from a combination of the heating of oxygen around the meteor and the mix of minerals ignited as the rock enters Earth’s atmosphere. I think for those 15 seconds, I was the luckiest photographer on the planet to have capture this phenomenon.

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Honorable mention, Animal portraits Crow Chasing Puffy Owl: The crow saw the puffy owl resting and decided to chase away the owl from its territory.

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A northern gannet,one of the largest seabirds in the North Atlantic, catches a fish by diving from high in the air and pursuing it underwater, near the island of Noss, in Scotland’s Shetland Islands.

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Sunlight casts different colors as it filters through a declining glacier, the ceiling of a snow cave on the slopes of the Mutnovsky volcano in Russia.

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An American crocodile in Gardens of the Queen, Cuba.

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Wild horses tussle in Colorado.

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A lioness refuses the advances of the male during a prolonged courtship under a light rain in the Masai Mara national reserve, Kenya.

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Who's that?

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