/ 2025 / Nature / Astrophotography

• Prize
  Honorable Mention
• Photographer
  Yukio Nodo, Japan
• Date of Photograph
  29/01/2023
• Website
  https://www.yukionodo.com/
• Instagram
  https://www.instagram.com/negiasatsuki/

As twilight fades into darkness, the Milky Way begins to rise—silent, immense, and ancient. It is not merely beautiful. It feels sentient, like something watching from beyond time. There is a strange gravity in its glow, pulling not just the eye, but the soul. I stood before it with a sense of unease—not fear, but a primal reverence. The kind of dread that comes not from danger, but from the realization of how small we are. In this encounter, I saw not just stars, but the face of something divine—vast, cold, and unanswerable.

I am a Japan-based landscape and nightscape photographer. My work explores landscapes not simply as scenery, but as places shaped by the quiet interplay of light, time, and the broader rhythms of nature. I am drawn to moments where the movements of the Earth and the sky intersect with traces of human presence. Rather than seeking dramatic spectacle, I focus on subtle transitions: how light shifts and how time settles into the land. Photography, for me, is a way of tracing these invisible layers and preserving fleeting relationships between the Earth, the sky, and the places we inhabit.

Awards Travel Photographer of the Year (TPOTY) 2025
- Finalist, Best Single Images in a Portfolio (Landscape, Weather & Climate)

Tokyo International Foto Awards (TIFA) 2025
- Gold Winner, Editorial / Environmental - "White Wounds"
- Gold Winner, Nature / Trees - "Ephemeral Dialogues"
- Silver Winner, Nature / Astrophotography - "Rocks on Earth Dream of Stars"

Budapest International Foto Awards (BIFA) 2025
- Silver Winner, Nature / Astrophotography - "Arch of The Ancients"
- Bronze Winner, Nature / Astrophotography - "Where Time Sleeps"
- Bronze Winner, Architecture / Industrial - "White Wounds"

Prix de la Photographie Paris (PX3) 2025
- Bronze Winner, Nature / Water - "The Passage of Trials"
- Bronze Winner, Press / Nature & Environmental - "White Wounds"

Vixen 6th Starry Sky Photo Contest 2025
- Award of Excellence - "Orion Lands on the Snowy Peaks"