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I really hate how heavy the editing is on some of these. Really distracting from the composition themselves.
this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2026
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Yeah it makes them look CGI, or like... The other thing.
Actually it's funny that, as photography took photorealism down a peg (as a technically impressive aesthetic), LLM generated images are making the "perfectly smooth" look seem tacky, and like the opposite of an image that took lots of human effort (not that I'm doubting these, just talking about the style).
I do like the 'reaching out midnight branch' one. The composition is fantastic - got it nailed across multiple distances!
Can you provide the link where you found them? I couldn't find them on https://www.worldnaturephotographyawards.com/winners-2025 .
Wrong competition! Though there is some great stuff there too. Try https://internationallandscapephotographer.com/index.php/previous-years/2025-top-202-entries
These all look so otherworldly. Absolutely gorgeous.
Yeah, that's because they are all manipulated to look that way. They are beautiful as art but if you were standing where the photographer stood and seeing these scenes with your eyes, this is not what you would see. In an increasingly digital world where everything we see is manipulated, I am starting to long more for photos that show me what my eyes would see. Ironically it hasn't been all that long that we've been able to do that very well with cameras at resolutions that approximate our visual capabilities. Yet soon after we could do that we've switched to making photos look like paintings.
Its never been true that cameras capture what you see exactly, our vision is constantly adjusting for light value. If I take a picture of a sunset facing the sun, I can see both the sky and the ground in good detail, if you want to accomplish that with a photo, you'll either need a gradient filter and overexpose, or take bracketed shots and transpose them. (e: what I mean to say is, to get to a point of what the artist sees, it always requires post processing)
There's also the issue that our vision has a very narrow point in which you process fine details, just try to read something in your periphery, you'll find the spot you can read is quite small.
Either way, I'm being a pendant, I know what you mean, some of the best shots in this series are the abstract ones IMHO, they represent a change in perspective we don't take into account or see often, the wide ones that are clearly trying to represent a scene are very processed, to the point where I see how AI came to give glowy soft edges to everything
Where can I get HQ versions?
Number 1 in the list looks completely AI honestly.
It does, that was my first thought, but the resolution isn't very good here. It's a little better downloaded and still looks unreal, but at least not so ai! https://internationallandscapephotographer.com/index.php/previous-years/2025-top-202-entries
Cant believe this is on the same planet as Frankfurt Station
Gosh, these are so gorgeous it's almost unreal! Thank you for sharing them with us here! I likely wouldn't have seen them otherwise.