Grand Prize Winner: Rodney Lough Jr., 51, photographer, Happy Valley, OR

Sometimes bigger really is better. Rodney Lough Jr. used a collapsible, large-format (8x10) view camera to capture this stunning vista of spraying geysers at a hot spring in the Black Rock Desert, Nevada. An extremely small aperture and long exposure on Fujichrome Astia 100F transparency film rendered the twilight scene with incredible detail and depth of field. But to hear him tell it, the photo practically took itself: “It’s not hard to be inspired by what you’re looking at. I capture it the way I see it, so others who would never see this in real life are able to enjoy it forever.”

Tech Specs: Arca-Swiss 8x10 F-Line view camera with 150mm f/5.6 XL Schneider Super-Symmar lens; 16 sec at f/64 on 100F Fujichrome Astia Professional film.