Spectral

• Prize
  Best of Best in Nature / Photography
  Winner in Landscape / Photography
• Lead
  Cody Cobb

These photographs reveal a hidden luminescence in the wilderness of the American West. From collapsed lava tubes lined with microbial mats to high elevations where lichens thrive, a strange fluorescence occurs when certain minerals and organic materials are subjected to ultraviolet radiation. This spectrum of light is invisible to humans.A parallel world is unveiled in the night with long exposures using an ultraviolet light source. The eerie light that is emitted from within these once familiar surfaces transmutes the mundane into something extraterrestrial.

Cody Cobb is a photographer based in the American West. His photographs aim to capture brief moments of stillness from the chaos of nature.For weeks at a time, Cobb wanders the American West alone in order to fully immerse himself in seemingly untouched wilderness. This isolation allows for more sensitive observations of both the external landscape as well as the internal experience of solitude. These portraits of the Earth's surface are an attempt to capture an entanglement of the observer and the observed.