Northwest Exposure Photo Contest Winners Revealed

If you're a member of Washington Trails Association, then you will have already seen the winning photos of the 2012 Northwest Exposure Photo Contest take center stage as a 2013 calendar in the latest edition of Washington Trails magazine.

If this is the first time you're looking at the winning photos, be prepared to add a few must-do trails to your My Backpack hiking list. The winners (and all of the incredible submissions we received this year) inspired us, and we're sure they'll motivate you to get outside and hike this year!

About the Grand Prize photo: Mount Baker and the Milky Way

Lijuan Guo, grand prize winner of WTA's 2012 Northwest Exposure photo contest, loves snowshoeing and winter camping on Mount Baker. She spends many a sleepless night taking photos of stars and experimenting with light.

The winning photo was one of them, taken in early summer on the still-snowy slopes of Artist Point. To capture the stars of the Milky Way, Lijuan used her Nikon D800 with a 14–24 mm wide-angle lens and a timed, long exposure at ISO 1600. She adjusted the color temperature in post-processing.

More winning photos: beaches, animals and summits

Check out the slideshow to see the 15 other winning photos across five contest categories.

Jake Johnson's photo of a family dinner at Second Beach took 1st place in the Families on Trail category. Harry Ableman's photo of a barbed owl in the Hoh rainforest carried the Flora and Fauna category. Pablo McLoud's stunning summit shot of a hiker on Trapper Peak won in the Hikers in Action category. Facebook fans picked Jason Neuerburg's fiery shot at Shi Shi Beach as our Offbeat Outdoors favorite. And winning in the new Trailscape category this year was Charles Rackson's trail portrait near Wing Lake in the North Cascades.

Thanks, photographers, judges and sponsors

Thanks to everyone who entered a photo this year. We were blown away both by the quality of your photos and by how stunning Washington state looked through your lenses.

Also, a huge thanks to our judges—Tami Asars, Randall J. Hodges, Damien Murphy, Eli Boschetto and Kindra Ramos—all of whom spent hours locked in a room enjoying your photos and agonizing over the tough choices. Thanks, too, to our great prize sponsors.

Play the slideshow

Which one is your favorite?

Have a favorite photo among the winners? Tell us about it. Have a photography tip you swear by? Share them with your fellow photographers.