Among the winners and honorable mentions from the 2018 Travel Photographer of the Year Contest are an expected array of wilderness scenes and animal portraits, but also a surprising number of unnatural environments.

Over 12,000 submissions for this year’s competition included mesmerizing images of art installations, aerial views of urban architecture, suspenseful shots of elegant bridges and window-reflected construction scenes.

Even some photographs of purely natural places seem strikingly architectural, like this photo of rocks carefully perched on eroding earthen columns.

Above: People’s Choice, “The Girl Who Leapt Through Time” by Daniel Cheung; Honorable Mention, “Alone in the Crowds” by Gary Cummins; Third Place Winner, “Reflection” by Gaanesh Prasad; Nature:Third Place Winner, “Mars” by Marco Grassi.

Even rather mundane settings can make for wonderful photos. Above and below: People’s Choice, “Traveling to Heaven” by Trikansh Sharma; Cities: First Place Winner, “Another Rainy Day in Nagasaki” by Hiro Kurashina.  (via Colossal).

Circling drones cast soft light on landscapes below (and create UFO-style patterns in the skies over) gorgeous natural settings in this series of surreal nature images by photographer Reuben Wu.

Dubbed LUX NOCTIS II, this series follows up on a previous set of ground-illuminated works created in a similar vein. But in this case, the use of drone technology adds a fresh dimension to the sequel imagery, both in terms of the quality and source of light as well as the figures created by the aerial micro-vehicles giving it off.

The photographer has traveled around the world to capture sandstone mountains, bubbling volcanoes, gorgeous lakes and rivers, often employing (natural or artificial) light to set the scene.

“Each image is a carefully planned scene consisting of multiple lighting positions,” he explains, “layered to produce a theatrically lit composition. Using the GPS-enabled aerial light/drone in specific positions in space, I am able to create moods of drama and tension through chiaroscuro, and the ability to illuminate isolated features of a scene and exclude unwanted elements.”

“It’s so easy to become numb to conventional depictions of beautiful nature. In casting a new, unfamiliar light, I want people to see that while other planets are fascinating and incredible to us through the eyes of spacecraft and rovers, it is our own planet which has so much grandeur and beauty which is both accessible to us and worthy of preservation and protection.”

Light other time-lapse light art, his works trace patterns that are only fully visible once a photograph is taken, which in turn highlights the exposure time in play within each piece (sometimes also visible through star patterns in the backgrounds).

More about his project and its creator: “Reuben Wu is an artist with a profound interest in the ways that advancing technology can foster new forms of creative expression. Using a Fiilex AL250 in tandem with the 3DR Solo drone and Phase One XF camera system, Reuben has developed a method for selectively ‘painting’ nocturnal landscapes with light via multiple exposures.”

His photographic manipulations are uncanny, creating bizarre effects and optical illusions, all while remaining highly realistic and (perhaps most impressively) quite true to the original real-life source material.

By working from actual photographs, Erik Johansson manages to capture but subvert everyday built environments. Take Under the Corner, for instance, a photo montage he worked on for months.”I shot all the buildings in Prague,” he explains, and “combined the photos using Photoshop. No CGI or illustrated elements.”

He also spent a long time with one of his latest works, Self Supporting, which he says was an “idea I’ve been carrying with me for a long time. I find the structural properties of an arch interesting, where each part is supporting the other. If you remove one it will all collapse but as long as the structure is untouched it will remain strong.”

The landscape for Self Supporting was shot in Bohemian Switzerland in the Czech Republic and the houses were photographed in Prague and Stockholm. One of the constituent structures is shown above. “The sketches start very simple but over time become more detailed.” He sometimes uses SketchUp to model his ideas, but says they also get reshaped by the source material he photographs.

Full Moon Service is about as surreal as the come, but there is a surprising amount of reality baked in per the behind-the-scenes video above. “I brought out 7 rice lamps, 7 light bulbs, an electric generator, a car and two models out in a field” in Sweden, recalls Johansson. It still required some magic, though. “The main part that has been retouched in this photo is to replace the rice ball with a moon texture, the light and the mood was very close to what you see in the photo.”

More from the artist’s website: “Erik Johansson (born 1985) is a photographer and image creator from Sweden based in Prague, Czech Republic. His work can be described as surreal scenes created by combining different photographs. Erik works on both personal and commissioned projects with clients all around the world. In contrast to traditional photography he doesn’t capture moments, he captures ideas with the help of his camera and imagination. The goal is to make it look as realistic as possible even if the scene itself contains impossible elements. In the end it all comes down to problem solving, finding a way to capture the impossible.”

It started on a cold and snowy night when a wandering Japanese photographer became fascinated by the way the white flakes were piling up on an ordinary vending machine on the side of a road.

Eiji Ohashi began to document these machines, set against the rural backdrops and natural landscapes of Japan, a country with the highest ratio of vending machines to humans in the world (1 to 23).

For Ohashi and others, these devices are symbols of warmth and light in the long dark winters of Hokkaido, Japan’s cold north island. They offer hot drinks to offset the nighttime chill.

Japan’s famously low crime rate likely contributes to this vending machine culture as well, helping them to survive free of destruction or vandalism even in remote areas.

Indeed, they stand out as bright and modern in many contexts. Ohashi frames his curious subjects expertly against ancient architecture, vernacular structures, scenic mountains and vast bodies of still water.

An idle thought while waiting out a snowstorm led to an accidental artistic discovery: projecting a movie on falling snow can result in an visually rich result bordering on magical, in turn captured on film.

Photographer Brian Maffit had no idea what to expect when he turned his projector to face outside his window during a snowstorm, but when he realized the potential, he began documenting the results with both still and video cameras.

By zooming in and out, shifting the perspective of the projector and the camera, and taking shots at various degrees of snowy downfall and capturing moments throughout the movie, the images end up spanning a surprising visual range of colors and contrasts.

“The ‘RGB dots’ were the biggest surprise, I guess when the projector is showing a white screen, it is really rapidly cycling between fully-saturated red, green, and blue screens… thus the dots in a few of the shots.”

Aside from the embedded video and stills found here, you can also visit his Flickr page for high-resolution images taken throughout the experience. And the film in question? The Lorax. Perhaps best watched on snow anyway.