You can explore the Nature Photographs of the Year 2023 exhibition at Vapriikki from February 13 to April 14, 2024. The exhibition includes all 38 award-winning images, including the Nature Photograph of the Year 2023: Jetro Luhta’s stunning shot of a rainbow in a mountain landscape. The magnificent atmosphere and balanced composition of the landscape photograph chosen as the Nature Photograph of the Year delighted the competition jury at first sight.

Jetro Luhta.

The Nature Photograph of the Year 2023 competition collected a total of 11,089 images from 690 different photographers. As in previous years, the competition had nine categories. Eight of them were traditional, and the images could be processed and adjusted only very moderately. The ninth was a special category Free and Creative, where the rules allowed a little more vigorous processing methods. Originals of all the finalist images were requested to check the compliance of the competition files with the rules.

Of all the images participating in the competition, the jury selected 1496 semifinalists from 453 photographers. Of these, 401 images from 200 photographers made it to the finalist images, competing for the prize places. For each competition category, the jury selected the category winner, the 2nd and 3rd prizes and the honorable mention recipients, and finally the Nature Photograph of the Year from the category winners of the traditional categories.

Ari-Matti Nikula.

The Nature Photograph of the Year, the category winners of the competition and the other award-winning images in the competition form the Nature Photographs of the Year 2023 exhibition, which will tour around Finland for the next year.

The aim of the Nature Photograph of the Year competition is to tell about the diversity of Finnish nature, its views and events, as well as the experiences and insights of the photographers in nature. The Nature Photograph of the Year is a visually impressive photograph that demonstrates the skill of photography and whose main message is Finnish nature.