Take a Virtual Hike Through the Great Outdoors With These Stunning Nature Photos

肖益成, courtesy of EyeEm
肖益成, courtesy of EyeEm | 肖益成, courtesy of EyeEm

If you've spent the summer lounging on your couch, the stunning nature photos below—spotted by Boing Boing and curated by German photography community EyeEm as part of an ongoing photo competition—might inspire you to ditch the comforts of air conditioning for the great outdoors.

For its fourth annual photo awards contest (which it has billed as the world’s largest), EyeEm enlisted a panel of judges to sift through nearly 600,000 entries and choose 100 finalists. These moderators used EyeEm's phone app—which employs AI software to suggest the top photos from the user's camera roll—to select 20 prize-worthy images from each of the contest's five categories: street photography, portraiture, photojournalism, architecture, and the outdoors.

EyeEm announced the top contenders in late July 2017. In mid-September, these photographs will be exhibited at the 2017 EyeEm Photography Festival & Awards in Berlin, where officials will announce category winners and name a Photographer of the Year.

Until then, you can take a virtual hike through some of the world's most stunning natural attractions by checking out the finalists for the outdoors category below:

André Dogbey, courtesy of EyeEm
Anthony Castro, courtesy of EyeEm
Guiga Pirá, courtesy of EyeEm
Iván Ferrero, courtesy of EyeEm
Justin Edward Okoye, courtesy of EyeEm
Linus Strandholm, courtesy of EyeEm
Marc Leppin, courtesy of EyeEm
Masaki Sato, courtesy of EyeEm
Michael Färber, courtesy of EyeEm
Michael Lynch, courtesy of EyeEm
Michael Moeller, courtesy of EyeEm
Michael Schauer, courtesy of EyeEm
Nils Leithold, courtesy of EyeEm
Patrick Lee Yong Choon, courtesy of EyeEm
Simon, courtesy of EyeEm
Stefano Rulli, courtesy of EyeEm
Xiao Han, courtesy of EyeEm
肖益成, courtesy of EyeEm
Zane Jēkabsone, courtesy of EyeEm
Zhang Yang, courtesy of EyeEm