Humans have always been a bit obsessed with the places we don’t belong. The sky was off-limits until we built machines to borrow it, and the underwater world still treats us like temporary visitors at best. Yet those are the two environments we keep trying to photograph anyway, because when you finally get a clean frame from up there or down there, it doesn’t just look beautiful. It looks impossible in the best way.
And after we recently featured the Exposure One Awards’ Black & White Nature Photography winners in the Animals category, we’re now diving into two more categories of their contest: Aerial and Underwater.
Let us know in the comments which of these stunning photos you enjoyed the most, and you can explore more submissions across the contest categories on Exposure One’s website and Instagram.
#1 “Flight Lines” By Holly Kirkland
Description: Photographed above Lake Magadi, flamingos lift off, their bodies forming loose diagonals across dark water. In flight, the flock becomes a study in rhythm—wings catching light in brief, alternating intervals crossing the frame. Movement becomes pattern, rendered in stark contrast from the air.
Gold Award in the Aerial Category at the Professional level.
Honorable Mention in the Patterns & Forms Category at the Professional level.
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20points
Aerial photography turns the planet into a pattern. From above, coastlines become brushstrokes, forests turn into texture, and human-made geometry starts to look oddly fragile against the scale of the landscape.
#2 “Méduse” By Patrick Desormais
Honorable Mention in the Underwater Category at the Non-Professional level.
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17points
#3 “On Approach” By Ronja Arnold
Honorable Mention in the Underwater Category at the Non-Professional level.
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17points
Repetition, fractures, symmetry, erosion, the random logic of rivers and roads. It can be beautiful in the obvious way, but it can also be unsettling, because distance has a way of making everything feel both clean and indifferent.
#4 “Calligraphy” By Holly Kirkland
Description: A flock of flamingos skims the surface of Lake Natron, pulling ribbons of sediment into delicate lines behind them. Their movement becomes mark-making — strokes and curves traced by feet and wings. In this brief alignment of light, behavior, and shifting sediment, nature creates its own calligraphy.
Bronze Award in the Pattern & Form Category at the Professional level.
Honorable Mention in the Aerial Category at the Professional level.
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16points
#5 “Shadows Of The Pod” By Gerardo Del Villar
Description: “Two orcas travel side by side in the cold northern sea, their white patches glowing against the dark water. I waited quietly for the pair to line up, using black and white and a high ISO to embrace the grain and turn the moment into a simple study of shape, light, and family.”
Honorable Mention in the Underwater Category at the Non-Professional level.
Honorable Mention in the Animals Category at the Non-Professional level.
Nominee in the Ocean Category at the Non-Professional level.
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16points
Underwater photography does the opposite. Instead of flattening the world into design, it wraps everything in atmosphere. Light doesn’t behave normally down there, but scatters, fades, and changes personality. Contrast can vanish in a few meters, details dissolve into haze, and suddenly the photograph becomes a negotiation between clarity and mystery.
#6 “Croc 3 Point Stance” By Rick Beldegreen
Description: This American crocodile was photographed in Banco Chinchorro, Mexico, located 25 miles off the SE tip of Mexico in the Caribbean.
Honorable Mention in the Underwater Category at the Non-Professional level.
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15points
#7 “Going With The Flow” By Dirk Pendzialek
Honorable Mention in the Underwater Category at the Non-Professional level.
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15points
Even when the scene is calm, the water makes it feel suspended, like the whole world is holding its breath.
#8 “Mother & Child” By Zach Parker
Description: A baby Humpback Whale hitching a ride on its mother's nose.
Silver Award in the Underwater Category at the Non-Professional level.
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14points
#9 “Octopus Hug” By Xaime Beiro
Description: That exact moment when the sea wants to embrace you.
Silver Award in the Underwater Category at the Professional level.
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14points
What’s especially satisfying about putting these two categories side by side is how different the challenge is, even when the goal is the same. In the air, you’re fighting scale and timing while trying to make something massive feel readable. Underwater, you’re fighting movement, visibility, and light itself. Either way, there’s no room for lazy composition.
#10 “Holy Waters” By Chris Gug
Description: The iconic Christ of the Abyss statue lies in ~30' of water off Key Largo. For decades, divers scrubbed it clean, but several years back, that became illegal, and set out for this shoot after several years of coral growth - not too much, not too little.
Gold Award in the Underwater Category at the Professional level.
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13points
#11 “Jellyfish Galaxy” By Carol May
Nominee in the Underwater Category at the Non-Professional level.
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13points
Taken together, the winners, nominees, and honorable mentions in these categories aren’t just “cool views,” they’re reminders that photography can still show us places we don’t naturally belong, and make them feel close enough to understand.
#12 “Face To Face” By Gerardo Del Villar
Description: “Photographed in the deep waters off Isla Guadalupe, a great white shark approaches head-on, framed by striped pilot fish. I held position and waited for this direct encounter, using black and white to isolate its face in the dark water and reveal a calm, curious predator rather than a monster.”
Honorable Mention in the Underwater Category at the Non-Professional level.
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13points
#13 “The Shape Of Escape” By Holly Kirkland
Description: An aerial moment of a zebra herd in motion, carving temporary paths through dust and shadow. In black and white, their stripes and dust turn into pure pattern—an instinctive geometry, fleeting and wild. This is the shape of escape, photographed from a helicopter at appropriate distance. Kenya 2025.
Nominee in the Aerial Category at the Professional level.
Nominee in the Animals Category at the Professional level.
Nominee in the Lights & Shadow Category at the Professional level.
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12points
#14 “Shall We Dance” By Chris Gug
Description: “A mimic octopus (Thaumoctopus mimicus) glides downward like a parachute after unexpectedly launching itself into the water column. After shooting it against the sand for the past 30 minutes, I had to rapidly adjust my exposure to aim into the sun.”
Nominee in the Underwater Category at the Professional level.
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12points
#15 “Mobula Abstract” By Emily Krakoff
Nominee in the Underwater Category at the Non-Professional level.
Nominee in the Ocean Category at the Non-Professional level.
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12points
#16 “A Drifter” By Theodore Nielsen
Description: A juvenile Green Sea Turtle captured in the shallows, grazing on seagrass. They are very far from home. Spotts Beach, Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands.
Nominee in the Underwater Category at the Non-Professional level.
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11points
#17 “Swimming Around” By Fabi Fregonesi
Nominee in the Underwater Category at the Non-Professional level.
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11points
#18 “Above Or Below” By Zach Parker
Description: “An image that I have flipped upside down, making it look as though this humpback whale is taking off from the surface of the water and into space.”
Honorable Mention in the Underwater Category at the Non-Professional level.
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10points
#19 “Mouth Of The Wandering Ghost” By Antoine Scuiller
Honorable Mention in the Underwater Category at the Non-Professional level.
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10points
#20 “Eclipse” By Remuna Beca
Description: A shark silhouette transforms the sun into an underwater eclipse.
Nominee in the Underwater Category at the Professional level.
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10points