- Photography
- Photo Contest
Pilot’s stunning aerial desert picture wins National Geographic’s 2018 photo contest
Flying high above the desert, photographer Jassen Todorov captured breathtaking scale and won grand prize.
It was a hot day in the desert in late May, just outside of Apple Valley, California, and Jassen Todorov knew the searing heat would challenge his small plane—a 1976 Piper Warrior.
Having often flown over California’s Mojave Desert, Todorov was familiar with the general area, including a Volkswagen vehicle storage lot located just outside the Southern California Logistics Airport. It was there Todorov would shoot the grand prize-winning image of the 2018 National Geographic Photo Contest.
The Southern California Logistics Airport—also known as Victorville Airport—is known for storing retired airplanes, eventually to be used as scrap metal or parts. But following the 2015 news that Volkswagen was manufacturing cars that subverted emissions
