Now and again, I’ll see an image that just grips me in the best way possible. The composition, the visual narrative, and the color – everything about the scene feeds into a visceral narrative that seems to stop you in your tracks.
That’s exactly how I feel about this image that recently won the Adventure & Experiences Portfolio category of the Travel Photographer of the Year (TPOTY) Awards 2025. The image was captured by Sara Bardotti, an Italian fashion designer turned seasonal receptionist, come documentary photographer, during a trip to the Yamal Peninsula, Siberia, Russia.
In the frame, two fishermen dressed in warm clothing smash through a frozen tundra in search of sustenance in what looks like one of the harshest environments on Earth.
While the frozen tundra and extreme-cold clothing of the fishermen, who are native Nenets indigenous to the Russian Arctic, already paint a visceral picture, what grips me the most is the shoveled snow flying toward the viewer.
Bardotti captured this at 1/250sec on a Nikon D750, and it almost makes you feel as though you’re standing there with her, about to be pelted by the cold snow.
However, the f/2.8 aperture and choice of focal point render the flying snow slightly out of focus, but the fishermen are perfectly in focus, which has your eye bouncing back and forth between these two main components in what I think is a perfect composition.
The ISO 2000 and black-and-white edit add the finishing visceral touches in the form of harsh contrast. I think that harsh edit works well for the subject matter, as the name of the location, Yamal, means “end of the Earth” in the local Nenets dialect.
For more stunning images, view the entire series Bardotti shot of the Nenets fishermen that day on the Siberian tundra at the Travel Photographer of the Year website.
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