National Geographic presents the winners of its 2013 photo contest. There were over 7,000 entries from more than 150 countries. Of those, this picture of a polar bear rising in the frigid waters of the Arctic by Paul Souders took the Grand Prize. From a short interview with Souders:
The bear swam up to the iceberg, ducked under and stayed underwater for several seconds as I moved my zodiac into position and then held out the camera on a six-foot boom near the entrance. I didn’t fire until she came up to breathe and take a look at me, and I kept firing the shutter as she submerged again. She hung there, just below the surface, watching me, then came up for another breath before swimming away. I couldn’t see her from where I sat in my small zodiac boat; I was shooting blind with the wide angle. I sensed it was a unique situation, but the first thought in my mind was that I really didn’t want to screw up. I’d already dunked the remote radio trigger and camera into the salt water, and had to jury rig a replacement cable by chewing off the copper wires and hand-splicing it together. I don’t know how, but somehow it worked.
There are galleries full of category winners and finalists to look through as well.