Winners of Cold snap! International Polar Year photo contest

Canadian Geographic and the IPY 2012 Conference Secretariat present the winning images of the Cold Snap photo contest.

Canadian Geographic’s first international photo contest was dedicated to the world’s polar regions. In these stunning images, photographers from around the world showcase communities, landscapes, wildlife and science and research in the Arctic and Antarctic. Judges Scott Linstead and Harry Nowell, both professional photographers, and Kathy Frankiewicz, Canadian Geographic’s former photo editor, chose the three winning images in each category. Contest winners were awarded a total of $3,400 in prize money and had their photographs exhibited at the International Polar Year 2012 Conference, From Knowledge to Action, in Montréal last April.

Polar communities

CATEGORY WINNER

A little girl plays ball in a playground in the community of Kangirsujuaq in northern Quebec.
Michelle Valberg, Ottawa

FIRST RUNNER-UP

The Yamal Nenets, indigenous nomadic reindeer herders, pass through Bovanenkovo in Russia’s Yamal Peninsula every summer.
Bruce Forbes, Rovaniemi, Finland

SECOND RUNNER-UP

At the first sign of fall ice, children in Hall Beach, Nunavut, eagerly lace up their skates for a game of hockey.
Michelle Valberg, Ottawa

Polar wildlife

CATEGORY WINNER

Making its way to the sea, a southern elephant sealpauses amid a crowd of king penguins in Gold Harbour, on South Georgia Island, in the southern Atlantic Ocean.
Derek Kyostia, Comox, B.C.

FIRST RUNNER-UP

A leopard seal in the inlet of Neko Harbour, on the Antarctic Peninsula, captures a penguin that has tried in vain to its jaws.
Jamie Scarrow, Nanoose Bay, B.C.

SECOND RUNNER-UP

As part of a courtship ritual, an Arctic tern offers fresh fish to a prospective mate in Churchill, Man.
David Hemmings, Whitby, Ont.

Polar landscapes

CATEGORY WINNER

An opening in a large iceberg off the Melchior Islands in the Antarctic Peninsula reveals the colour palette of the ice.
Jamie Scarrow, Nanoose Bay, B.C.

FIRST RUNNER-UP

A strip of light creeps across a mountain face in Svalbard, Norway.
Stuart Thomson, Longyearbyen, Norway

SECOND RUNNER-UP

Hoodoos on Bylot Island are a Ski-Doo and qamutik ride away from Pond Inlet, Nunavut.
Michelle Valberg, Ottawa

Polar science and research

CATEGORY WINNER

A group of scientists retrieves equipment from its ice camp before heading back to the Polar Continental Shelf Program facility in Resolute, Nunavut.
Bertrand Lemeunier, La Malbaie, Que.

FIRST RUNNER-UP

The icebreaker and research vessel CCGS Amundsen takes scientists and students past the Smoking Hills, on the east coast of Cape Bathurst in the Canadian Arctic.
Ariel Estulin, Toronto

SECOND RUNNER-UP

A photographer focuses his lens on hundreds of thousands of king penguins assembled in the Salisbury Plains on the island of South Georgia in the southern Atlantic Ocean.
Derek Kyostia, Comox, B.C.