International Photo Contest Winners

A 97-year-old woman waits for the bus in her Sunday best in Chamblee, Georgia.

National Geographic magazine announced the winners of its International Photo Contest this week, and we have the top three photos in the People, Places, and Nature categories. More than 208,000 photos were submitted to this year’s contest, so we wondered, how exactly did they go about making their decisions?

Monica Corcoran, who helped coordinate the contest, gave us the inside scoop: Three judges, National Geographic design editor Darren Smith, freelance photojournalist Maria Stenzel, and National Geographic staff photographer Mark Thiessen were locked in our 8th floor viewing room in the NGM Photography Department for an entire day looking at the pictures.

“Basically it was a pitch-black room with a huge screen that we projected the images onto, and the only noise was ‘Yay’ or ‘Nay’ from the judges as we cycled through thousands of photos. It wasn’t until the final rounds that captions were read and debate happened,” Corcoran says. No one said it’d be easy.

See the rest of the winning photos, and the reasons why the judges selected them, after the jump.

People Winner (above): Debra Jansen of Atlanta, Georgia

“We pass quiet moments like these each day and they go unnoticed,” says National Geographic design editor Darren Smith, “but the photographer found a great subject and composition in the seemingly mundane.” Freelance photojournalist Maria Stenzel loved that “the photo shows our own culture,” and was attracted by the “jarring juxtaposition of this dignified woman waiting at a bus stop.”

This peppermint shrimp is spending the day in a branching vase sponge about 75 feet deep in Bonaire’s Margate Bay. Lighting was achieved with an HID torch shining on the outside of the sponge. The photographer, working upside down, had to carefully control buoyancy while approaching as close as possible, taking care not to touch the sponge with camera or light and to avoid disturbing the shrimp or the sponge.

Nature Winner: William Goodwin of Birmingham, Alabama

National Geographic staff photographer Mark Thiessen “was drawn into its world by the circular shape of the sponge.” For freelance photojournalist Maria Stenzel, “the technically difficult shot was beautifully seen and executed in its own natural landscape.” National Geographic design editor Darren Smith agrees: “This image transports the viewer to another world. The technical execution is flawless, the spiraling composition frames the shrimp and draws us in, and the lighting and varied colors add dimension.”

Licancabur volcano is located on the border between Chile and Bolivia.

World Places Winner: Hugo Machado of Angra do Heroismo, Portugal

For Darren Smith, National Geographic

design editor, “The cloud performs a delicate balancing act atop the mountain, making the two massive forces of geology and meteorology appear light. Clouds are often just garland in mountain photos, but here the cloud is an equal subject, casting shadows which help define the peak.”

Click here for Viewers’ Choice winners and honorable mentions, as well as galleries, puzzles and wallpapers from the contest.