The Siena International Photo Awards include a high level of international participation. The 2020 contest received nearly 48.000 images from amateur and professional photographers from 156 countries worldwide.  I enjoyed browsing through examples from various websites and am glad to share some of my favorites.  Below are selections sorted by topic.  All comments are by the photographer.

ARCHITECTURE and DESIGN

By Maurizio Sartoretto, The stairwell of a building, in this case a hospital, becomes an occasion to combine graphics, architecture and design.

By Everhard Ehmke

By Muhammad Almasri, An interesting entrance guides the way into a place called the World of Illusion. The entrance makes you somewhat lose focus, especially when standing in the middle. (I couldn’t find out where this is.)

By Martin Seraphin. It was still very early and the Maat Museum was still closed. But the guard walking slowly along the building. There was only a narrow path between the building and the river Tejo and my feet got wet taking this shot.

By Majid Hojati. After a long time of drought, the water has returned to the Zayandehrood River, and people are sitting by the historic Khaju Bridge, enjoying the water and having fun.

By Marcel Van Balken, In a play of light and shadow the building forms an almost surrealistic and abstract decor, reinforced by the apparently disproportionate presence of man.

By Barbara Schmidt.The ceiling of Nevigeser Wallfahrtsdom church has truly unique architecture.

By Attila Balogh, Only a single apartment’s windows are lit in Tsing Yi district, a densely populated area of Hong Kong, right before sunset.

By Ute Scherhag The Berlin TV tower on Alexander Place is the tallest building in Germany and at the same time the most distinctive landmark in Berlin.

By Nataliya Andrianove, Passers-by on an area of the Heydar Aliyev Center, building complex in Baku, Azerbaijan, designed by architect Zaha Hadid.

By Alberto Caselli, This unique staircase is located inside the Chianti Classico Antinori winery near Florence. The shot captures the moment when a woman is passing.

By Jacqueline Hammer This is an upward view of the beautiful wooden spiral staircase at CitizenM hotel in London. It is quite a small staircase and at the top there are several circular lights, a few of which are shown here.

NATURE

By Christian Vizi, Water plants and small fish at cenote Aktun Ha, known as Car Wash cenote in Quintana Roo, Mexico.

By Stas Bartnikas. This aerial shot of a small glacial lake surrounded by ice was taken in Denali National Park, Alaska from a float plane.

By Hong Jen Chiang. Captured from an aircraft flying over Iceland. Braided Rivers exhibit numerous channels that split off and rejoin each other to give a braided appearance. They typically carry fairly coarse-grained sediment down a fairly steep gradient. Consequently, braided rivers usually exist near mountainous regions.

By Mauro Battistelli, Early in the morning on a November day, inside the swamp, looking for the magnificent beauty of the Spanish moss.

By Stephan Furnrohr. On the Greenland Icecap. As the summer approaches, large meltwater lakes appear at the edge of the ice. The water filters all colours until only blue tones remain, which are scattered and reflected on the ice.

 

By Armand Sarlangue. Aerial abstract image from the central Utah desert, showing the side of a canyon, the tracks left by the path of water, and the reliefs as they can be seen only from above.

By Juan Garcia Lucas, The wicker stems of Cañamares, Cuenca.

By Khanh Phan. This is a picture of nipa palm forest in Quang Ngai Vietnam. Nipa palm is located in a rich ecosystem. The only hole in the nipa palm forest is the relic of the bomb crater from the Vietnam War.

By Paul Kiitagaki, Strong winds blow through the branches of an oak tree and light up the sky at the Kincade fire in Sonoma County, California. The fire lasted more than 10 days and subsequently burned 77,758 acres until it was fully contained.

By Natnattcha Chaturapitamorn. The iceberg resembles the shape of a fish. The small pond mimicking the eye of the fish, while the breaking ice in the tail helps to create the sense of movement of the fish’s tail.

By Martin Rak. Leaves against the silhouettes of grey beech trunks in a cold winter forest.

By Sergio Saavedra Ruiz. A spectacular sea storm hits the North coast of Cantabria, Spain. The waves exceeded 12 meters.

By Stanislao Basileo. One winter day, walking along the banks of the river, I noticed a fairytale scenario several willow branches had fallen and frozen, creating a wonderful landscape.

By Yunhua Yu. Night storm in Chinese metropolis.

By Agorastos Papatsanis. The autumn dusk in the woods is always a magical moment. These macrolepiota procera, which can reach up to 30 cm in height, stand on a carpet of pine needles among blue trunks.

 

ANIMALS

By Fahad Alenezi The Arctic Fox saves his food in different locations before the winter to return back to it during the heavy winter in order to avoid the risk of dying of starvation.

By Nachum Weiss. In the Israeli Negev desert, a Nubian Ibox looking for food is very carefully escorting her one-and-a-half-month-old puppy in a difficult and dangerous passage.

By Henley Spiers, A school of uniquely patterned spotted eagle rays passes beneath me on an unforgettable dive in the Maldives. The spotting on each ray is unique, like fingerprints.

By Amit Eshel A.large group of Mobula Rays in the Sea of ​​Cortez.These creatures are as graceful in mid-air as they are in the water, throwing their wings like flying birds.

By Tobias Friedrich. Mandarinfish usually mate every afternoon during sunset in very shallow water. These two emerged from the coral reef in the clear water, when the female left her eggs and the male his sperm.

Thomas P Peschak, Germany, South Africa.

By Artur Stankiewicz,. A giraffe in the middle of the Mara River, in the Serengeti Park, with soft, orange light, and wildebeests passing by.

By William burrard-lucas. Black leopards taken in Africa, but as far as I knew, nobody had ever captured a series of high quality images of a wild black leopard in Africa before. I traveled to Kenya.

By Mohammad Murad, Framed by the glow of street and car lights along Kuwait city, two Arabian red fox cubs explore the night just outside their den.

By Massimiliano Giovampaoli. In the vicinity of Florence airport while a plane is taking off, a flock of starlings are trying to survive, by averting off a predator that is attacking them.

By Jose Fragozo, Lake Bogoria is a saline and alkaline lake in the Kenyan Rift Valley that at times is home to one of the world’s largest congregations of lesser flamingos.

By Galice Hoarau. Juvenile fish protecting himself inside a stinging box jellyfish. The photo was taken during a blackwater dive in the Lembeh strait, Indonesia.

By Sonda Cai. These peculiar filaments help the young Pompano to move and eat slow-moving crustaceans, small crabs and other fish. As the body grows it lengthens and the fins get shorter.

By Yunhua Yu, At sunset, in an enchanting and peaceful atmosphere, a group of camels walking among the desert dunes.

HUMANS

Azim Khan Ronnie. Vietnamese workers sit surrounded by thousands of incense sticks in Quang Phu Can, a village in Hanoi, Vietnam, where the sticks have been traditionally made for hundreds of years.

By Amirmahdi Najafloo Shahpar. Muslim women praying in Hamedan, Iran for Eid al-Fitr. The last day of Ramadan is celebrated by Muslims all over the word with special prayers and gatherings.

By Orban Tanhan. The daily life of people feeding the animals in the harsh winter months east of Turkey.

By Eric Tkindt. A gymnast’s jump on the parallels at the Flanders International Team Challenge. Her expression clearly shows her tension and fear.

By Hassan Ghaed. Homs, Syria’s third-largest city, had been involved in the war for four years. A mother, who returned home after the end of the conflict, found her child’s toy car in their destroyed house.

By Tobias Friedrich. Night diving at a temperature of minus two degrees Celsius in Eastern Greenland, swimming among icebergs under the ice of a fjord.

By Igor Altluna. Children jumping from the roof of our ship in the seas of Malaysia, the game consists of who jumps more and makes more turns.

By Olesia Kim. A family watching the scene in front of a colorful striped background.

By Briana Gardener. Women of a variety of shapes, sizes, and ethnicities. Challenged to wear no makeup, and posing in outfits styled to match the tone of their skin, they attempt to combat unhealthy beauty standards.

By Thien Nguyen. A fishing net moving underneath the water’s surface. Many local fisherman families along the coastline of Phú Yên province will follow the near-shore currents to catch the anchovy during peak season.

Koichi Omae by Silvia Alessi. I met the amputee dancer Koichi Omae, originally from Osaka, on my way. At 23, when he was entering his career, a car accident took away all his dreams. He had his left leg amputated below the knee. With great willpower, he decided to continue his career as a dancer, aware that without the limb, he would have to spend much more energy not only in performing the artistic gesture, but also just walking normally.

By Michael Kowalczyk. A man with a blue shirt is carrying a big new rectangle-shaped mirror on his shoulder along the street and passes a man with a blue shirt standing behind a sale stand with cellphone accessories in Medellin, Colombia.

By Paula Bronstein. Veiled Thai muslim women take a selfie on the Talo Kapo beach wearing their best dresses on Eid al-Fitr on June 5, 2019 in Pattani, Thailand.

By Xiangang Chen, The green train, known as the poverty alleviation train, has greatly helped the local Yi ethnic people to trade agricultural products and thus help minority areas to get rid of poverty, in Liangshan, China

Natalya, Irina, and Tatyana are three twin sisters from the northern Russian city of Krasnoyarsk. (I think they are triplets.)

By Natnattcha Chaturapitamorn. A father and his son are trying to catch fish inside a cave in South Vietnam during the monsoon season.

By Trung Pham Huy .A group of farmers washing and packing waterlilies before sending them off to the market in an early morning in the Me Kong delta. Waterlilies are widely used for decoration and sometimes in traditional local food.

Thanks to Bored Panda, Mymodernmet, and of course the Siena International Photo Awards, 2020.

16 thoughts on “Siena International Photo Awards, 2020

  1. I am most appreciate of this website. It brings such peaceful times to my life. It is a place I relax as though I were meditating.Thank you for adding great joy through the beauty of this photography website.
    I have shared.
    Sincerely,
    Judith K Jumper

  2. I treasure your remarkable collections of pictures and forward them to friends across North America who have the ability to enjoy them as much as I do. Thank you.

  3. I always your photos..they bring so much happiness to a sometimes bleak time..thank you and God Bless.

  4. I am so grateful. I love beautiful pictures. I use some as virtual background in zoom AA meetings.

  5. It is always a joy to receive the photos you send. Whatever the subject, they are interesting, and some are phenomenal. I usually think myself partial to animal photos, but your collections have disabused me of that idea–although the animal one are a delight.
    Thank you for amassing this huge collection and then sharing it with the world.

  6. Thoroughly enjoyed the 2020 Siena International Photo Awards wonder. Now, on to the next WONDER.

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