/ 2025 / Nature / Astrophotography

• Prize
  Honorable Mention
• Photographer
  Yukio Nodo, Japan

Beneath a breathless sky, trees rise from the flooded forest and stand still in perfect reflection, as if suspended between two realms—earth and sky, past and present. The Milky Way arches above, mirrored faintly on the water’s surface, connecting heavens to the quiet world below. There is no wind, no sound—only the silent dialogue between stars and trees, between light and memory. In this moment, I witnessed not just a landscape, but a kind of stillness that speaks louder than motion: the stillness of a world listening to the cosmos.