Verdon Tomajko (45, Superior, Colorado)

Mountain Goat Babies | Mt. Evans Wilderness, Colorado

Tomajko captured this image of agitated goats mid-storm at the top of Mt. Evans. "They were more afraid of the lightning than they were of us," he said. To get the shot, he sat for hours with his wife atop the 14,265-foot peak. The air was so electric that his hair stood on end. 

"It is hard to tell which has shaped the other more," David Brower wrote in 1980, "Ansel Adams or the Sierra Club." In the 1930s, Adams's photos of places like Kings Canyon and the Grand Tetons contributed greatly to the Sierra Club's successful campaigns to preserve wilderness. 

Though politically influential, Adams's work was, at its core, pure art. "Beauty comes first," he said. In that spirit, the Smithsonian Institution, Nature's Best Photography magazine, and the Wilderness50 Coalition, of which the Sierra Club is a member, collaborated on a photo competition celebrating the preservation of America's wild places—and the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act.

Although they came from a wide range of backgrounds, the honored photographers had one major characteristic in common: perseverance. "Getting out there wasn't easy," Daniel Silverberg said of the trip he took to get his shot of a sunrise in Washington's Alpine Lake Wilderness. "There were a lot of moments of doubt. It's pouring rain, you hear thunder, you're freezing cold, it's early morning—but your gut's telling you it's going to be worth it."

"The wilderness doesn't come knocking on your door; you have to go out and find it," said Diane McAllister, who captured an image of sandhill cranes in New Mexico's Bosque del Apache Wilderness. "It isn't about luck either. I got up, got out of bed, and waited."

The contest had four categories, with professional, amateur, and student winners in each. Out of 5,000 submissions, judges chose 13 winners and 50 "highly honored" images. All the photos selected for this Sierra feature were taken by amateurs or students. (An exhibition of the winning images, titled "Wilderness Forever," runs through the summer of 2015 at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. For more information, go to naturesbestphotography.com.

All photos courtesy of Nature's Best Photography

Daniel Silverberg (29, Seattle, Washington)

Backpacker at Sunrise Over Isolation Lake | Alpine Lake Wilderness, Washington

After a day of hiking in the rain, Silverberg and his girlfriend went to sleep thinking they might not see the sun for the rest of their trip. "I set my alarm for really early and hoped the weather would clear up for the sunrise," he said. "I would have slept through it if she hadn't motivated me to get out."

Jeff Rennicke (55, Bayfield, Wisconsin)

Aurora Borealis Over Honeymoon Rock | Gaylord Nelson Wilderness, Wisconsin

While motoring to Honeymoon Rock in the Apostle Islands of Lake Superior, Rennicke was stunned when the northern lights began blazing. "It lasted for only about 30 seconds," he recalled. "I jumped out of the boat into chest-deep water and only got two frames of the aurora."

Thomas Goebel (18, Jensen Beach, Florida)

The Narrows | Zion Wilderness, Utah

Goebel snapped this photo on a family expedition to Zion. The college sophomore kept his camera gear in a dry-bag for the hike through the Virgin River. "We had to wade through the river with steep canyons on either side," he said. "The water was about 40 degrees." 

Tim Aiken (19, Palo Alto, California)

Alaska Range | Denali Wilderness, Alaska

Aiken and his father won the lottery to bring their car into Denali National Park. "We were the first ones at the gate and the last ones out," said Aiken, who used a borrowed camera to get the shot. He has yet to get a camera of his own.

William Patino  (27, Wollongong, Australia)

Valley of Solace | Yosemite Wilderness, California

On his first foray into mountain photography, Patino was hoping to get just one good frame from his trip to Yosemite. "I really wanted to forget about the work of other photographers and view the park through my own eyes and lens," he said.

Diane McAllister (58, Reno, Nevada)

Sandhill Cranes | Bosque del Apache Wilderness, New Mexico

McAllister envisioned this photograph before it happened. She waited patiently for the pair of cranes to glide in to roost. "The way I shoot wildlife, I don't get closer, closer, closer," she said. "I respect their boundaries."

Samuel Féron (47, Noisy-le-Sec, France)

Mineral Aurora | Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness, New Mexico

"For me, wilderness has to be related with a threatening atmosphere," Féron said of the menacing clouds pictured above the hoodoos of Bisti/De-Na-Zin. The lighting reminded him of the Arctic aurora borealis. "It was interesting to shoot this effect in the middle of a dry desert," he said.