The 16th Epson International Pano Awards, the world’s largest global competition for panoramic photography, has unveiled its 2025 winners, showcasing artists who expand our perception of space, light, and landscape. From the icy peaks of the Dolomites to the shimmering northern skies over Senja Island, these images invite us not merely to see the world, but to step into it, to feel its vastness and its quiet intimacy.
Italy’s Alex Wides commanded the spotlight as the overall Open Photographer of the Year and Nature/Landscape category winner, earning acclaim for his breathtaking panoramas Last Fireworks, Jackpot, and Mann. “As the sun went down, the sky literally exploded,” Wides recalls of Last Fireworks, a desert scene ignited with fire-gold clouds. Using a Sony A7 IV on a tripod, he captured a multi-exposure, 360° panorama, transforming a fleeting sunset into a monumental vision of light and form.
In Jackpot, Wides captured the Northern Lights over Senja Island, a reward for years of patience and perseverance. “The sky exploded in a half-hour of dancing colour,” he says, recalling the moment when nature’s most ephemeral performance revealed itself. And in Mann, a 270° night panorama in the Italian Dolomites, lunar light sculpts snowdrifts and ridges into a crystalline tableau, a testament to the endurance required to witness beauty in its rawest form at minus fifteen degrees Celsius.
Yet the awards are not merely about wide vistas. The 2025 Digital Art Prize, awarded by Epson Australia, went to Spanish photographer Daniel Vine for his delicate portrait of life in a coastal village of Vietnam. “These women, working in morning shade and salt-laden air, are the unseen guardians of sustenance,” Vine observes, capturing the quiet resilience that threads communities together. He also claimed the RAW Planet Award for Cathedral of Shadows, Hanksville, Utah, a stark interplay of sun and shadow that evokes the timeless silence of the American Southwest.
Southeast Asia too shone brightly. Singapore’s William Chua won the Pano Awards Southeast Asia Open Photographer of the Year with an arresting image of the wildebeest migration. Amidst the swirling chaos, a lone animal glanced back – a fleeting, perfect moment of stillness and awareness amid motion.
Other winners underscored the awards’ breadth and ingenuity. Kevin Nyun (USA) was named Amateur Photographer of the Year for Nature/Landscape, Christoph Simon (Germany) claimed the VR/360 category for an immersive Icelandic night panorama (main feature image), and Chris Byrne received the Curator’s Award for Elysium, a serene composition where flora, terrain, and sky converge with painterly precision.
David Evans, Curator of The Pano Awards, notes that 2025 has further pushed the boundaries of panoramic photography. “Ultra-wide panoramas dominate the entries, but photographers continue to innovate – exploring low angles, close-up perspectives, movement, and aerial views,” he explains. With entries spanning Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Tibet, Iceland, Argentina, and the Lofoten Islands, the competition affirms the panoramic format as one of the most evocative storytelling tools in contemporary photography.
From blazing deserts to frozen highlands, and from intimate human gestures to cosmic displays, the 2025 Epson International Pano Awards remind us that photography is not merely a window on the world, but a vessel for feeling it, for standing on the edge of wonder and seeing it whole.
Explore the full gallery of winners and immerse yourself in these extraordinary visions at www.thepanoawards.com
