Here are the winners of the 2019 photo contest

Our judges agree that Alisha Neubauer hit the shutter at the perfect moment to get this shot at her trailer park on Pigeon Lake, Ont. Although Alisha says she planted her son, Mason, 6, and his friend, Ava Lee, 8, on the dock, she was shocked to capture him kicking around in the water (something she hadn’t asked him to do). Our judges agree staged photography can often come off as inauthentic, but the warm, glowing sunset here makes us feel like we’re sitting there, too. “Everyone was super-pumped about Canada Day,” says Alisha, spending the day running around with the flag and decked out in red and white gear. After the photo session, everyone enjoyed the fireworks at the park, had a family dinner, played with sparklers, and decorated around everyone’s trailer. “We’re there every weekend together,” says Alisha. “And it’s like one giant family all summer long.”

We’ve seen a lot of starry skies over the years, but nothing has quite captured the night like this shot taken by nature enthusiast Jason Dain. The bright foreground gives this scene so much detail. Our judges felt like they were right there with Jason, looking on in amazement at the Milky Way. Jason hoped he could spark that very emotion about his beloved community of Peggy’s Cove. “I spend a lot of time down in the area, and with the exception of the lighthouse, this kind of captures what you see for the most part,” he says. “Throw in a lobster and it’d be perfect.” Lobster or not, we couldn’t agree more.

This little gem of a spot is a quick kayak ride away from Janet Butler’s cottage on Long Bay on Lake Rosseau in Muskoka, Ont. “I try to take a picture of the island every season and get a good one each year,” she says. The judges love the vibrancy of the leaves, each colour showcasing the variety of tree species growing on just one small island. “My favourite thing about the photo is the different personalities of all the trees,” says Janet. “Usually in Muskoka, if you look at the little islands, all the trees have been blown the same way. In this shot, they’re going different directions, which I think is unusual.”

We first saw this photo of Kristen Psihogios’ fixer-upper on Lake Prospect, Ont. when she DM’d it to us on Instagram, and we were happy to see she also entered it in the contest. The primary colours, the priceless expressions, the sign on the cottage telling us these are indeed the “Glory Days”—our judges think the image is so well composed, it could be art directed. Kristen takes an annual Canada Day photo with her kids, and wanted to feature the once yellowing, peeling cottage’s new coat of paint because, “it just felt like the final missing piece to it becoming ours.” She sent her kids, as well as the co-owners’, up into the attic with the flag. “It just seems very quintessentially cottage. They’re all happy to be together.”

This shot is one Isla’s favourites because, “the sunset was as far up as your eyes could see, and then down over the entire lake until it met the golden-coloured sand.” Our judges agree it’s hard not to be mesmerized by this view and the outline of her brother, Jordan, paddleboarding on the aptly named Golden Lake, Ont. “Because of the way the cottage faces, and the direction of the beach, it means that every night the sunsets are just so spectacular,” Isla says. But a sky full of liquid pinky-gold is harder to capture than you might think—the exposure has to be just right to achieve the dark silhouette on the water without the rest of the shot being over-exposed. Although we think this picture is amazing, Isla says it doesn’t even do the sunset justice. We can’t imagine the real-life view.

Our judges’ immediate reaction was that this shot by Gilles St-Laurent looks like a painting. The focus on the loons and the mist, and the monochromatic colour scheme, almost make it too good to be true. And Gilles agrees. “I knew when I was taking the photo, because of the scene, it was going to be something.” He was eating breakfast at his cottage on Lac Bob, Que., when he looked over at the water and saw the loons 30 feet from shore. “I left breakfast behind and ran down.” By bending down low and holding his camera millimeters from the water, Gilles was able to take the photo from the loons’ eye level, making the foreground out of focus and drawing your eye to the birds. With this trick, he captured the surreal mood of the morning, so well that, “it almost looks like a charcoal drawing.”

How can you not love up this little guy? When Ivan Vujevic saw a duck family on the rocks while he was kayaking along McKeller Lake, Ont., he had to stop and say hello. He walked and got down to the duck’s eye level to snap this shot. “I don’t think I’ve ever taken a picture of a wild animal that was that close to me before.” Our judges love the intimacy of the shot, as well as the contrast between the lonely landscape and the warm fuzziness of the duck’s down feathers; it evokes a feeling we don’t often see in wildlife shots. All this might have something to do with Ivan’s timing. “It was sunset, so the sun was orange and golden. I think it kind of shows up in its feathers.”

It was difficult for our judges to pick a winner in this category—but it was this moment that jumped out in a sea of long, winding roads depicting a more literal sense of ‘The Drive.’ From the full trunk to packed back seats, the drive to and from the cottage was never so well-captured. After five days at Otter Lake near Parry Sound, Ont., where “everybody had been bonding,” Maura Daffern says the ride home was “a car full of silly chaos.” This obviously candid photo not only catches Maura’s son, Cameron’s, mischievous behaviour, but five different personalities—Cameron; her daughter, Claire; her daughter’s friend, Charlotte; the cat, Shadow; and the puppy, Raven—all showing different emotions, “Kids, family, and pets. One of the great joys of going up to the cottage is spending time with them.”