Grand Prize and Nature Winner: 'Dirt'

Jaw-dropping, rare anti-cyclonic tornado tracks in open farm land narrowly missing a home near Simla, Colorado. (James Smart / National Geographic 2015 Photo Contest)

A stunning photo of a tornado in Colorado was chosen as the grand-prize winner of the . The photo, titled “DIRT,” was shot by of Melbourne, Australia. It was selected from more than 13,000 entries to the prestigious competition.

Last spring, Smart spent 15 days chasing storms with his brother and some friends who are meteorologists. On the last day, Smart ended up outside of Simla, Colorado, where he shot the winning photo.

"The tornado was slowly getting bigger as it picked up the dust and soil from the ground on the farmland," Smart said. "It wasn’t moving very fast, so we kept getting closer as it tracked next to the home as you can see in the image. Driving down a Colorado dirt road, we were lucky enough to be on the west of the tornado, so it was front lit. This really helped to get great detail out of the image and the perfect light for the sky and foreground."

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Smart won $10,000 (USD) and a trip to National Geographic headquarters in Washington, D.C., to participate in the annual National Geographic Photography Seminar in January 2016. His photo, which won in the Nature category, will be published in National Geographic magazine.

of Binghamton, New York, placed first in the People category for a portrait of a young man on his cherished bicycle in a slum in Uganda, and of Andalusia, Spain, won in the Places category for his photo of a marsh in Spain that has been partially destroyed by radioactive waste.

Honorable Mentions include a photo by of an orangutan holding a leaf as an umbrella in Bali, Indonesia, and a photo by of the surreal, colorful landscapes of the Tian-Shan mountain range in Central Asia.

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A man rows a boat on the West Lake in the snow on Dec. 5, 2015 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province of China. (ChinaFotoPress via Getty Images)