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Starfighter

Christiaan Van Heijst

Netherlands

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A woman carved from light and silence. Shadows tell no stories, yet she sits between them — defiant, poised, waiting. Architecture becomes theatre, and she, the unanswered question.

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Nominee

Lady in White

Two silent witnesses face the infinite — where sea, sky, and thought dissolve into shades of blue. A horizon without answers, a question without sound. Time pauses, barefoot and breathless.

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Front row Seats

At high altitude and sunset, a 747 carves through the stratosphere, leaving behind spiralling contrails tinted in fiery orange. The fleeting trails echo the beauty and turbulence of flight, vanishing into silence as quickly as they appeared.

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Dalí in the sky

A Boeing 747 lifts off into golden Arctic light, leaving behind a trail of mist and winter silence. Set against Alaska’s frozen wilderness, this image captures the raw power and fleeting grace of flight at the edge of the world.

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Golden Liftoff

A lone Starfighter rests in a surreal salt desert, its polished fuselage echoing a time when speed and altitude defined the edge of possibility. Set against a stark, alien-like horizon, the image merges past ambition with timeless isolation.

Honorable Mention

Photographer of the Year

In the heart of Baku’s ancient city, a surreal moment unfolds: centuries-old stone walls stand in quiet contrast to a futuristic skyline beyond. The soft evening light blurs time, merging history and modernity in a single, dreamlike frame.

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The Old City

A dizzying study of scale and symmetry, this series captures Hong Kong’s vertical architecture from below — where geometry becomes abstraction, and the sky a shrinking afterthought. A portrait of density, order, and visual disorientation.

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Vertigo

An abstract visual diary of New York in black and white. The images strip the city to its essentials—structure, contrast, and fleeting moments of stillness.

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New York, New York

Long exposure, wide-angle shots taken from the flightdeck of the Boeing 747, cruising along the upper atmosphere.

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An Office with a View

The strong contrail of a Boeing 747 coming at us in the opposite direction, flashing her landing lights as she passes by.

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Dalí in the skies

The Old City of Baku offers a beautiful blend of romantic nostalgia and mind blowing modernism.

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The Heydar Aliyev Cultural Center is one of the most eye catching and striking architectural buildings in the rapidly developing capital of Azerbaijan.
Finished in 2013, it was meant as a symbol of Azerbaijan's future that broke away from Soviet rule in 1991.