Color doesn’t just decorate a photograph—it talks. And the 21 winning images from the 2025 Chromatic Awards prove that loud and clear. This year’s winners deliver a full-on visual experience, where bold hues, subtle tones, and fearless creativity collide. The Chromatic Awards continues to stand tall as one of the world’s most exciting platforms for color photography, welcoming both professionals and amateurs who aren’t afraid to push pixels with purpose.
What makes the Chromatic Awards hit different is its mission. It’s not just about trophies or bragging rights—though those help. It’s about giving photographers a global stage to share stories, chase passion, and get rewarded for seeing the world in color-first ways. From dreamlike landscapes to intimate portraits, the 2025 winners feel personal, emotional, and wildly imaginative.
Leading the pack, British photographic artist Liam Man took home the Professional Grand Prize with a surreal image that stops you in your tracks. His photograph captures a rare solar eclipse over Patagonia’s rapidly retreating Glacier Leones, bathing the fragile ice in otherworldly light. It’s stunning, yes—but also a quiet warning about climate change and the beauty we’re on the brink of losing.
On the amateur side, Polish photographer Dorota Górecka claimed the Amateur Grand Prize with a hauntingly calm portrait set inside an abandoned pastel-colored hospital. Her doubled subject feels suspended in time, wrapped in silence, turning faded walls and soft color into emotional storytelling gold.
Together, these 21 enchanting winners show exactly why color photography matters—it shapes mood, amplifies meaning, and turns moments into memories that stick.
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#1. Chromatic Photographer of the Year: "Ring of Fire and Ice" by Liam Man, United Kingdom
"A “Ring of Fire” solar eclipse reaches annularity as two ice climbers summit the Glacier Leones in Patagonia. A drone illuminates the ice’s textures and colours, battling fierce winds that whip up plumes of snow that burn in the sun’s rays.
In the foreground, the ice is strewn with rocky debris, remnants of a landslide triggered upstream. As the glacier receded, its retreat destabilised the valley walls, making them prone to collapse. This initiated a self-perpetuating cycle with the debris darkening the ice, increasing infrared absorption and further accelerating the glacier’s melt."
#2. Chromatic Discovery of the Year: "Red" by Dorota Górecka, Poland
"The session was shot in an old, abandoned hospital in Łódź, in the heart of Poland. The pastel colors still lingering on the walls created a unique backdrop—subtle, yet hauntingly present. Against this setting, I placed a model dressed in contrasting tone to highlight the surreal atmosphere even more. I hope I managed to capture the silence and stillness that still linger in the air of this deserted place."
#3. Abstract, 1st Place winner: "MidSummer Day’s Dream" by Gary Ng, Hong Kong
"This image captures the essence of the abstract beauty of the La Muralla Roja in Calpe, Spain, focusing on the interplay of light & shadow, contrasting pinks and blues, and layers of interlocking geometric forms. The cleanliness and almost surreal quality of the building’s structure seems almost like coming from a labyrinth in a midsummer day’s dream, save that the viewer will be reminded of reality by the small central opening of lush, thus obscuring the boundaries between dream and reality."
#4. Architecture, 1st Place winner: "Petit Lighthouse" by Deryk Baumgärtner, Germany
"Phare du Petit Minou is the name of a lighthouse built in 1848 west of the city of Brest in the Finistère department in Brittany. The picture was taken at blue hour, when suddenly the fog and the onset of rain dramatically intensified the mood. The light from the lighthouse reflected in the fog bank, creating a magical and eerie lighting situation."
#5. Cityscapes, 1st Place winner: "Hong Kong in the Veil" by Gary Ng, Hong Kong
"This photo shows the silhouette of a traditional Hong Kong junk boat venturing through a thick layer of sea fog that clouded the low rises of Victoria Harbour in Spring, leaving only the iconic skyscrapers of the Kowloon peninsula against a rare crimson sunset. It captures the contrast between the hustle of the metropolitan and the tranquility of its heritage, and represents a voyage for hope even in the midst of uncertainty."
#6. Conceptual, 1st Place winner: "The Inner Thread: Embroidering the Wound" by Izaskun Valmaseda, Spain
"The Inner Thread: Embroidering the Wound" makes a precise incision in the skin to reveal what we usually hide: the scaffolding of sensitivity that holds us together. The colored threads emerging from within are not decorative, but symbolic organs: blue like veins, pink like arteries, yellow like nerves… Each hue follows a bodily code I’ve translated into textile, as if memory, trauma, or biography could be embroidered."
#7. Culture, 1st Place winner: "MahaKumbh – World’s Largest Gathering" by Savadmon Avalachamveettil, Ireland
"A once-in-144 years phenomenon. Ash-smeared Hindu holy men (Naga Sadhus) charged into India’s most sacred river Ganges at dawn on the first most significant bathing day of the Kumbh Mela festival. An extraordinary display of human unity, spiritual energy, and collective consciousness."
#8. Environmental, 1st Place winner: "Glacier Requiem" by Paulo dos Santos Sousa, Portugal
"The picture presents a view of the Rhone Glacier, a significant entity in the Swiss Alps. However, the glacier’s usual icy-blue appearance is replaced with a stark grey, a consequence of being covered in UV protection sheets. This intervention is a result of efforts to slow the glacier’s rapid melting due to climate change. The sheets, an unconventional sight in such a natural landscape, offer a physical representation of the impact of global warming on our planet."
#9. Fashion and Beauty, 1st Place winner: "Crimson Blossom" by Bochun Cheng, United States
"Crimson Blossom is a dramatic, high-angle study of texture and emergence. The subject appears to blossom from a swirling, infinite expanse of deep red, layered fabric—a visual metaphor for intense emotion or a singular focus. The hypnotic concentric circles draw the eye down to the delicate, stylized face, which is the serene ‘bloom’ at the core of the turbulent visual field. This piece examines the breathtaking contrast between stillness and saturation, and the power of a subject to emerge, defined, from its overwhelming environment."
#10. Fine Art, 1st Place winner: "Evolution" by Christina Fischer, Germany
"Exploring a romanticized future of mankind in space."
#11. Landscapes, 1st Place winner: "Blue" by Nicola Manfredi, Italy
"Blue hours are done just to admire the beauty of the mountains with silence"
#12. Nature, 2nd Place winner: "Celestine Pool" by Daniel Reiter, Germany
"The images were taken from a small aircraft in Yellowstone National Park, the oldest national park in the world and now a world natural heritage site. The hot springs, geysers and bubbling mud pots fascinate with their variety of colors."
#13. People, 1st Place winner: "Tea Charm Time" by Guanhua Ren, China
"The morning mist has not yet dissipated, and the tea leaves stretch into jade ripples on the bamboo plaque. The old tea master’s calloused palm gently strokes the tea cake, kneading the rhythm of time’s sedimentation into every leaf vein. The young apprentice tiptoed to adjust the tea formation, his clothes stained with the fragrance of the mountains, and the light and shadow flowed between the tea ridges, frozen into a poetic line intertwined with inheritance and time."
#14. Photojournalism, 1st Place winner: "Georgia Protests: The early days of the riots" by Patrick Enssle, Germany
"The series delves deeper into the Tbilisi demonstrations, offering a striking exploration of the intensity and humanity that define this pivotal moment in Georgia’s history. The images reveal not just the chaos of tear gas, water cannons, and clashes with law enforcement but also the resilience and solidarity of the protesters. Participants are seen shielding one another, tending to injuries, and building makeshift barricades in scenes that underscore their collective courage and determination."
#15. Photomanipulation, 1st Place winner: "Lost" by Zoltan Toth, Hungary
"A quiet rebellion of the wild against the urban rush. The scene embodies my longing to escape the city and return to nature."
#16. Portrait, 1st Place winner: "Lynette, acid attack survivor" by Erberto Zani, Italy
"Uganda, 2025. Lynette, 27, was attacked with acid when she was three. One evening, she and her sisters were gathered in the house, sitting on the carpet for dinner. Two masked men came through the door throwing some buckets full of acid at the group of women who got up by clicking leaving only Lynette on the floor, too small to move quickly. The main suspects of the attack fell on Lynette’s stepmother, who seems to have harbored a grudge against her daughters and wanted to eliminate them. Soon after the attack she was arrested, but managed to bribe the guards and remained in jail for a little while and has since disappeared."
#17. Sports, 1st Place winner: "Soil Is Our Mother" by Dimitris Sideridis, Greece
"The pit at Gangavesh Talim – Traditional Indian wrestling takes place inside Talims or Akhadas in pits of reddish soil. The authentic gyms of India are nothing like the modern gyms."
#18. Still Life, 1st Place winner: "Colorbomb" by Lisa Shin, United States
"A study in the beauty of color, light and shapes."
#19. Street, 1st Place winner: "The Butcher" by Robert Lie, Indonesia
""The Butcher" is an image I captured while conducting street photography at the Modern Market in BSD City, Indonesia. Within this market lies a section dedicated to meat, including pork. When I came across this booth, I found the positioning of the butcher amidst the selection of meat to be particularly striking."
#20. Travel, 1st Place winner: "Keepers of the River" by Diego Di Guardo, Italy
"On the still waters of the Li River, a fisherman and his cormorants breathe as one. The lantern glows like a small domestic sun, guarding a craft that survives only at dawn and in silence. Every movement carries memory, every pause carries time."
#21. Wildlife and Animals, 1st Place winner: "After the meal" by Pål Hermansen, Norway
"Polar bear relaxing after eating a walrus meal. A very rare prey for polar bears."
In Summary
What are the Chromatic Awards?
- An international photography competition dedicated exclusively to color photography.
Who won the 2025 Professional Grand Prize?
- British photographer Liam Man for his surreal glacier eclipse image.
Who won the 2025 Amateur Grand Prize?
- Polish photographer Dorota Górecka for her atmospheric pastel-toned portrait.
Who can enter the Chromatic Awards?
- Both professional and amateur photographers from around the world.
Why are the Chromatic Awards important?
- They promote top talent, discover emerging artists, and reward creative storytelling through color.
