These Are the Best iPhone Photos of 2016

TIME, July 7, 2016

The winners of the ninth annual iPhone Photography Awards — an international photography contest that fosters iPhone and mobile photography — have been announced, with Siyuan Niu of Xinjiang, China, coming on top.

He is followed by First Place winner Patryk Kuleta of Warsaw, Poland, and by Californian Robin Robertis and Floridan Carolyn Mara Borlenghi in the second and third spots.

"I couldn't believe I got the prize," Niu tells TIME. "If I had to describe the feeling, I could only say that it feels like when Andy from The Shawshank Redemption finally reached out the sewers and hug the freedom in the lightstorm; it's like when Jack won the ticket to the Titanic; or when young Simba was born and lifted by the shaman baboon, Rafiki."

Selected from thousands of entries submitted by iPhone photographers from 139 countries around the world, the top four winners are joined by dozens more who received First, Second and Third prizes in 19 different categories — from travel to animals to portraits. "It's amazing to see what people capture and how connected they are to those moments, no matter what country in the world they are in," says the awards' founder Kenan Aktulun. "It feels like a warm invitation from someone sharing a slice of their life experience."

Grand Prize — Man and the Eagle

Niu won the Grand Prize for his image of a 70-year-old Khalkha with his golden eagle in the Tianshan Mountains in the south of Xinjiang, China. Titled Man and the Eagle, the image captures a tough man with a weather-beaten face who shares a tender companionship with his wild, trained bird.

Based in the Xinjiang Province, Niu was photographing the snowy landscape when the man came towards him on horse with the eagle on his right arm. "The eagle must have noticed me as it started flapping its wings and screeching, very agitated and vigilant," Niu tells TIME. "The old man used his hand and his voice to calm it down. They were touching face-to-face. With my iPhone in hand, I took the shot."

Niu shot with no other lenses or gadgets, and post-processed on Snapseed after applying a VSCO filter.

First Place — Modern Cathedrals

Second Prize went to graphic designer Kuleta for his Modern Cathedrals, an impressionistic look at a longstanding architectural structure. Kuleta, who was always more into nature and minimalistic long exposure landscape photography, recently started experimenting with architectural photography. He took to the streets of Poland and France with his iPhone 5, interested in merging long exposure photography with an impressionistic aesthetic.

"I simply fell in love with the painterly effect that came out of it," he says. "There is something grandiose and surreal about architecture itself, surreal because probably I will never understand how people are able to create these buildings, skyscrapers, how they even build them."

Second Place — She Bends with the Wind

Painter-turned-photographer Robertis from Carlsbad, California, was awarded Third Place for She Bends with the Wind. The image, an iPhone 6 shot of a woman swaying like an extension of the long Cape Cod grass around her with a red umbrella, falls in line with Robertis' love of the fanciful.

"My work attempts to capture images that invoke magical places found only in the subconscious of those who dare to peek behind the curtain of day-to-day life," she says.

Third Place — Wonderland

With Wonderland, a quirky father-and-son candid, Florida based photographer Borlenghi won Third Place. A conceptual photographer living and working in Miami, Borlenghi took this image as part of a series for #WHPwonderland, a weekend project organized by Instagram one weekend before Christmas 2015.

"I went on a little adventure with my five-year-old son to the beach at Crandon Park on Key Biscayne with reindeer masks," Borlenghi says. "It was mid-December, windy and colder than we expected. There was not a soul on the beach, and I am pretty sure the people we walked by on the way there thought we were crazy, but we kept on going."

Read the full article on TIME.com.