This image, created by Fabian Oefner, demonstrates the flow of the Rhone glacier throughout history in a creative and unique manner. The Rhone glacier, located in Switzerland, has been subject to severe melting over the years. Oefner utilized an LED-lit drone that was programmed with over 200 years of past glacier extent records to retrace the glacier’s outlines. The result shows the substantial decrease in the glacier’s size, offering to viewers a drastic comparison to the Rhone glacier of today. Oefner’s artwork offers a unique approach to visualize a historical flow that is environmentally and culturally important. Oefner’s photo illustrates both the beauty of the glacier and its surrounding area, as well as the dramatic changes it has undergone through time.
Link: https://fyfluiddynamics.com/2025/08/glacier-timelines/
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First Place, the viewing of long invisible phenomena through an innovative use of technology is impactful and unique along with being very aesthetically pleasing.
First Prize – The visuals of this image instantly had me hooked; I can see myself having an image like this hung up for decoration. It’s made even cooler by the creative use of long exposure and a drone to show the glacier’s movement over the years. It really emphasizes the passes of time in my eyes.
Second Prize. Using a drone in conjunction with long exposure to portray a flow which no longer exists over a very large area is a really cool idea, and the visual that this idea created is breathtaking.
Second Prize: I appreciate the visual in this image but even more so, the environmental impact that it represents.
First Prize. This image translates long-term, invisible motion of glacier into something visible and dynamic. By using a drone to retrace the glacier’s historical outlines, this transforms static data (glacier extents on old maps) into a kinetic representation of flow. The image compresses 200+ years of glacier change into one frame. It converts historical data into visible “flow paths”. It’s both poetic and scientific.
Third Prize. This is a beautiful example of what can be accomplished with long exposure and a light source. The idea of using drones to highlight the change of environmental features over time is very innovative and resulted in an incredibly impactful photo.
First Prize. The creative use of a drone and long exposure to generate an image that looks like a sci-fi computer visualization of the Glaciers life is awesome. Also, just being able to see so much history in one image for such a massive feature of the landscape is always special.
First prize! Using a drone to “draw” out old features in a long exposure is a super interesting use of technology! I’m also a sucker for darker photos and the teal-blue works very well with the dark mountains.