NASA Unveils Winning Shots From Its ‘Photographer Of The Year’ Contest

Lovers and dreamers of space can enjoy stunning images published by NASA because its photographers willingly give away their work to be viewed and used by the general public. Since NASA is a federal agency, its photos are automatically distributed in the public domain and vaguely credited as “Photo by NASA.”

To bring recognition to these talented photographers, the space agency launched its own ‘Photographer of the Year’ contest back in 2018 to welcome “friendly competition, bragging rights, and acknowledgement for being so crucial to NASA’s mission,” NASA’s head of mission imagery Maura White explained in a statement via Smithsonian’s Air & Space magazine.

Winners of the second annual contest were announced by the publication and the Twitter account of NASA’s photo department, but the entries don’t seem to be available on NASA’s own website.

The images, taken by some 70 photographers, were deliberated on by a panel of expert judges—including astronaut Don Pettit and Caroline Sheen, photo editor of the Air & Space magazine—and categorized into four groups: ‘Documentation’, ‘Portrait’, ‘People’, and ‘Places’ without an apparent “overall” champion.

View the four winning shots below, and head here to see the runner-ups of NASA’s 2019 Photographer of the Year contest.

Congrats to the winners of NASA’s second annual “Photographer of the Year” awards:

Documentation: @NASAWebb by Chris Gunn
Portrait: Tim Bencic with Tomography System by Jordan Salkin
People: Unitary Plan Wind Tunnel by Harlen Capen
Places: SSDI Facility by Chris Gunn pic.twitter.com/YbxkD8caZd