These breath-taking images won.

BY CAITLIN DEWEY June 12 at 2:58 PM

The first-place winner in the “Travel” category. (Adrienne Pitts/IPPA)

Much fuss has been made by professional photographers displeased with the democratization of their medium. Instagram has ruined photography, some have said. A camera in every pocket is less a blessing than a curse.

Into this hubbub come winners of the eighth annual iPhone Photography Awards — apparently determined to prove the haters wrong. IPPA is an informal effort to recognize the best in amateur iPhone photography; with a $3 entrance fee and only two requirements — that the photos be taken on an iPhone, iPod or iPad and that they not be Photoshopped — it’s truly a photo contest for the everyman.

That said, the winners have consistently been stunning: fields of glaciers, half-lit still lives, Technicolor sunsets. This year’s winners came from 17 countries; the first-place photographer of the year, Julio Lucas, is a Florida-based art director and digital strategist … who incidentally happens to havea pretty cool Instagram. You can see his winning images and several of the others below; all of the winning images, in all 17 categories, are alsoavailable on IPPA’s Web site.

Photographer of the year

1st Place – 2014 Photographer of the Year (Julio Lucas/IPPA)

2nd Place – 2014 Photographer of the Year (Jose Luis Barcia Fernandez/IPPA)

3rd Place – 2014 Photographer of the Year (Jill Missner/IPPA)

Architecture

1st Place — Architecture (Yilang Peng/IPPA)

2nd Place — Architecture (Chun Wai To/IPPA)

3rd Place — Architecture (Coco Liu/IPPA)

Landscape

1st Place — Landscape (Elena Grimailo/IPPA)

2nd Place — Landscape (Gwenn McGill/IPPA)

3rd Place — Landscape (Craig Harvey/IPPA)

Flowers

1st Place — Flowers (Jenny Anderson/IPPA)

2nd Place — Flowers (Lee Atwell/IPPA)

3rd Place — Flowers (Monica Ganter/IPPA)

Sunsets

1st Place — Sunsets (Little Su/IPPA)

2nd Place — Sunsets (Danielle Millar/IPPA)

3rd Place — Sunsets (Edward Adams/IPPA)

Panorama

1st Place — Panorama (Kyle G. Horst/IPPA)

2nd Place — Panorama (Roberto Pastrovicchio/IPPA)

3rd Place — Panorama (Birsan Ionut Liviu/IPPA)

Animals

1st Place — Animals (Michael Oneal/IPPA)

2nd Place — Animals (Naomi Wu/IPPA)

3rd Place — Animals (Teddy Cohen/IPPA)

Caitlin Dewey runs The Intersect blog, writing about digital and Internet culture. Before joining the Post, she was an associate online editor at Kiplinger’s Personal Finance.