Photo:Justin Gurbisz
“I have always been enamored with wide-angle photography,” says 21-year-old Justin Gurbisz (vacantnewjersey.com), an earth science student from Bloomfield, NJ. “I like to experience and capture the grand scale of architecture as opposed to a specific detail.”

Still, the details helped him win our December challenge to capture ruins—the rays of late-afternoon sun beaming through the rafters of this abandoned New York power plant, dust from a flock of fleeing pigeons glittering in the light.

Gurbisz’s biggest challenge was navigating the walkways of the decaying turbine hall. Shoving his tripod legs through the rusty grates beneath him, he contemplated his mortality as he peered through his Sigma 10–20mm f/4–5.6 EX DC lens set to 14mm (a 21mm full-frame equivalent on his Nikon D40). His exposure, set for plenty of depth of field: 1/8 sec at f/14, ISO 200.

—Matthew Ismael Ruiz