Epics of Exploration Photo Contest

Feb. 18, 26

Grand Prize Winner

My mission directive was clear: photograph this ice bound plane 268 feet deep within the Greenland ice sheet as if it were a crime scene victim — and find at least one signature image before the team disassembled it, brought it to the surface, returned to the U.S. Glacier Girl was restored to flying condition with nearly 80% original parts and now flies at air shows as part of the Rod Lewis Air Legends Collection.

Danger loomed everywhere. Displaced engine oil and hydraulic fluid coated every surface. Chemical vapors stressed our breathing. The glacier cracked with explosive force — the kind of sound that stops your heart mid-beat. We knew that if the ceiling collapsed, there would be nothing we could do. It would be over before we could react. Slippery surfaces, sharp metal, deep crevasses, and live ammunition meant constant vigilance was not optional. Days earlier, a six-ton, six-by-six-by-six-foot block of ice had fallen from the ceiling exactly where I had placed my tripod for this image.

Our three-person team would spend a total of twelve hours “in the hole” as I photographed every detail from every angle. “Glacier Girl” would come to represent the dogged 11-year persistence and sacrifice it took to locate and recover this iconic P-38F-1-LO Lightning.

Finalist

GEORGE KOUROUNIS

Securing ropes on a ledge for the descent down into Ambrym Volcano, Vanuatu. The crater is deeper than the height of the Empire State Building, and at the bottom is a rare lake of boiling lava, one of only a handful on planet Earth. At this point, you can already feel the heat from the lava below. The mission: To reach the bottom, gather samples & document this rare phenomenon up close.

Finalist

WILL STEGER

“Lunch in Antarctica is no picnic”. The 1989-90 International Trans-Antarctica Expedition was a 3,741-mile, 220-day dogsled expedition across Antarctica.

Finalist

KARIM ILIYA

Hidden away from the world, is an underwater cave where time seems to stop and gravity sleeps. While the world around you is frozen and the fish suspended in the blue space, only the dancing beams of light indicate the passage of time. In a moment that only occurs a few times in the year, the light hits the back of the cave, painting the rocks. Bathed in beams of sunlight, freediver Brock Carlson hovers between worlds, like an aquanaut staring into an alien dimension.