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New Atlas’s December 30, 2020 gallery, “The best photography of 2020,” brings together 44 selections from photography competitions and awards held during the preceding year. It is an editorial retrospective—not an official award for the year’s single best photograph or a complete record of everything made in 2020. Its appeal is the range: wildlife, landscapes, aerial photography, astronomy, sport, architecture and historic places all appear.
What this 2020 photography selection is—and isn’t
The gallery is a hand-picked collection of images associated with contests including the Sony World Photography Awards, Nature TTL Photography Contest, BigPicture Awards, International Photography Awards, Astronomy Photographer of the Year, Drone Photo Awards, Pano Awards, Siena International Photo Awards and Historic Photographer of the Year. It also points to the Mind’s Eye and Fine Art Photography Awards for unconventional imagery.
Those contest names provide context, not a common scoring system. The captions distinguish among overall winners, category winners, runners-up, honorable mentions, finalists and selected highlights. A photograph’s presence in the gallery does not mean it won its contest, and the article does not set out a formal rubric for ranking the images against one another.
Images that capture a moment
Sam Rowley’s “Station squabble”
Among the most striking examples is Sam Rowley’s “Station squabble,” showing two mice on an underground station platform. The image is associated with the Wildlife Photographer of the Year People’s Choice Award. New Atlas says Rowley took a week to capture it—a reminder that a brief-looking encounter can demand sustained observation.
#1 Best Overall
Florian Ledoux’s seal photograph
“Above the Crabeater Seals,” by Florian Ledoux, is identified as both the overall winner and the wildlife-category winner in the Nature TTL Photography Contest. The paired labels matter: this was not simply a featured image or a finalist entry.
Landscapes, weather and the natural world
Landscape photography is one of the gallery’s strongest threads. New Atlas singles out the Pano Awards, International Landscape Photographer of the Year and Siena International Photo Awards for visual spectacle. These are editorial observations about the selection, not independent assessments of the competitions.
Rank #2
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Storm over lavender in Spain
Juan Lopez Ruiz’s “Electric storm on lavender” is presented as a Pano Awards amateur nature/landscapes highlight. Its caption places the photograph in Spain’s Guadalajara province.
Diving among icebergs
Tobias Friedrich’s “Sub Zero” took first place in the Siena International Photo Awards’ The Beauty of Nature category. The caption describes a night dive among icebergs in Eastern Greenland, combining an unusual setting with the challenge of photographing underwater after dark.
Looking beyond Earth
Nicolas Lefaudeux’s “Andromeda Galaxy at Arm’s Length” is identified as both the overall winner of Astronomy Photographer of the Year and the winner in its Galaxies category. The gallery’s inclusion of the image extends its range from fleeting scenes on Earth to astronomical subjects.
Architecture and images of place
A single lit apartment in Hong Kong
Attila Balogh’s “Home Alone” took first place in the Siena International Photo Awards’ Architecture and Urban Spaces category. Its caption describes one illuminated apartment among the windows of Hong Kong’s Tsing Yi district. The image’s contrast between one lit window and the surrounding buildings gives the urban subject its focus.
Rank #4
Historic sites and unconventional approaches
The gallery also includes work connected to the Historic Photographer of the Year Awards, highlighting images of historical sites. New Atlas separately points to the Mind’s Eye and Fine Art Photography Awards as sources of less conventional imagery. These strands broaden the retrospective beyond nature and competition-winning spectacle.
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A smartphone portfolio in the mix
Daniel Heilig’s portfolio “The Desert Nomad” is captioned as having been made with an iPhone XS Max. That is a capture detail for this portfolio, not a test of the phone or a recommendation to buy it. The gallery offers no broader comparison of cameras or equipment.
How to read the gallery’s award labels
The most useful way to explore these images is to treat each caption as part of the photograph’s context. Keep the photographer, title, contest and exact distinction together: an overall winner is not the same as a category winner, and neither is interchangeable with a shortlist entry or a selected highlight. The collection’s breadth is more meaningful than an implied league table, because it brings together different subjects and contest categories without claiming a universal measure of photographic merit.
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