A Wider Lens: Winners announced for 2026 Field Season Photo Contest

For the last five years, the Quinney Field Season Photo Contest has showcased research, fieldwork, travel, and hands-on learning from students, faculty, and staff taken during the summer field season. This year’s entries captured a wide range of experiences, including starry landscapes, hungry wildlife, flipped perspectives, and Aggie adventures around the world.

Winners this year were recognized in five categories — landscapes, animals, people, closeups, and “Awesome, Awkward, and Amazing” — along with a Dean’s Choice Award selected by the dean of the Quinney College, Derek McLean.

This year's Dean's Choice goes to Sam Thompson for a striking image of a horseback rider trailing a herd of cattle across a dusty sagebrush range. The photograph captures the energy of people working in the West, along with the dramatic light and natural colors of the landscape.

Other winners include:

• Landscape: Landon Huter for his transcendent image of cowboy camping under a stellar summer night sky and the Milky Way.
• Animals: Adam Hess for his serendipitous timing, a Western kingbird poised to ingest an unlucky insect.
• People: Adrian Bastidas for an image of a determined hiker heading away into a green wild.
• Closeup: Madaline Buttars for an upward perspective of some tenacious and elegant mushrooms sharing space with a carpet of moss.
• Awesome, Awkward and Amazing: Chase Bonnett for a cleverly framed and flipped view of a geometrical world.

See the complete gallery of photo entries from this year’s contest.

“I love seeing the huge variety of experiences our students, staff, and faculty find in their own communities and around the world,” said Stacie Denetsosie, contest coordinator and one of five judges on the panel. “Every year I’m impressed that so many students are seeking experiences that build their skills and push them out of their comfort zones.”

The stories behind the photos are often as impressive as the images themselves.

Huter, an undergraduate student from the Department of Wildland Resources, captured his photo when he and a friend found their way to the top of a ridge in the White Cloud mountains in the middle of the night, after a long drive from Nampa, Idaho.

“We were planning to hike to the top of a nearby peak in the morning,” Huter said. “We arrived at the top of the ridge in complete darkness — or at least it seemed so. Once we got out of the car and our eyes adjusted, the stunning scene of the milky way over the 11,000-foot peaks appeared. We set up a cowboy camp behind the 4-runner, and I used my new camera to take the image.”

A thunderstorm rolled into the area at 4 a.m., forcing the two to descend for fear of being struck by lightning.

“Since we arrived after dark, and left before sunup, we never got to see the peaks with our own eyes. That photo is all I have from the trip.”

Huter has won a category in the contest for two consecutive years.

This college-wide contest has drawn a remarkable range of submissions since it began in 2022 — from stunning landscapes, to world travel adventures, to close-up views of the natural world at work, letting Aggies from across the university showcase their diversity and skills with the camera.

The winning photos and some runners-up will be showcased on social media and added to the gallery wall located in the Natural Resource building atrium on USU’s Logan Campus. Next year’s contest will launch at the start of the fall semester.