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Help the Smithsonian choose the best mobile photos of the year

Celebrating the art and labor that goes into taking stunning photos

Like all good things, beauty is fleeting and often elusive. Being able to capture and preserve it, to bottle up those little moments of aesthetic bliss and share them with the world, has been photography's great gift to the world. Celebrating the art and labor that goes into taking stunning photos, the Smithsonian Magazine has published the shortlist of 60 finalists for its 11th Annual Photo Contest. Broken down into six categories with 10 finalists in each, these images have been selected from a pool of over 50,000 photographs from 132 different countries. The new addition of a Mobile category acknowledges the growing influence and quality of smartphone photography, with Apple's iPhones dominating the selection.

The contest organizers are actively soliciting votes from the public to help determine the winner of the Readers' Choice award. Voting is open until May 6th and you're allowed to support your favorite photo multiple times — you can vote once every 24 hours. The Grand Prize, the Readers' Choice, and the six category winners will be announced on May 15th, which is also the date on which the 12th Annual Photo Contest will open its doors for submissions.

Here are five of the mobile nominees and our favorites from each of the other categories. All images published with the permission of the Smithsonian Magazine.

Smithsonian Magazine's 11th Annual Photo Contest finalists

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Mobile: Cannon Beach in Oregon
Photograph by Chaz Wilke (Los Angeles, California). Shot with an iPhone 4S.