Presenting Nature India photo contest 2016 finalist number four:

Ramit Dey, Trieste, Italy.

Photo caption: ‘From Earth to heaven’

Ramit, an astrophysicist who took up landscape photography as a hobby, explains this 2 a.m. capture rather philosophically:

“It is overwhelming to think how much we don’t know of a Universe that stretches over 13.6 billion light years. At the same time we have always pushed our knowledge, driven by curiosity and the pure will to know the unknown. As someone doing astrophysics, questioning everything that I don’t know comes naturally to me. That stirs my curiosity.

But sometimes its just nice take a break from all the logical thinking and appreciate the pure wonders that lie in front of us. This encouraged me to explore the vast wilderness of our planet. I found love in the mystery and darkness of the night sky thus taking up night photography as a passionate hobby.

This photo was taken at the beautiful Dolomites in northern Italy and as the title suggests, is symbolic of the flow of knowledge, starting from earthly elements (such as the flowers and the mountains) to the vast unknown of the visible Milky Way core and beyond. (Or you can just appreciate the stars and the mountains and the flowers without thinking about anything else!)”

The photo was taken at Tre Cime, Italy in July 2016.

Congratulations for such a brilliant picture Ramit, and welcome to the top ten of this contest!

The Nature India photo contest is in it’s third year. It has received an overwhelming response with hundreds of entries from around the world. The theme for 2016 was simply ‘Nature’ but, as always, we were looking for an inherent connect of the photos with science.

The Nature India editorial and design team is sure having a tough time selecting just three winners, who stand a chance of seeing their entries grace the cover page of one of our forthcoming print publications. The winner and two runners-up will receive a copy of the just released Nature India Special Annual Volume and a bag of goodies from Springer Nature.

As a run up to the final announcement, we are rolling out the top 10 finalists of the photo competition (in no particular order of merit) over the next few days on the Indigenus blog as well as our social media platforms (Twitter and Facebook). The final results will be announced in late December 2016.

Nature India’s final decision to chose the winner will be partly influenced by the engagement and reception he/she receives here at the Indigenus blog, on Twitter and on Facebook. To give all finalists a fair chance, we will take into consideration the social media engagement of each picture only during the first seven days of its announcement.

So watch out for our other finalists and feel free to promote, share and like your favourite entries with the hashtag #NatureIndphoto.