2nd Place - Chris Siracusa, Italy: "The view from AUR"

Studying abroad is supposed to change your perspective, and no one knows that better than junior biomedical engineering major Cory Quigley, the winner of Drexel’s 2016 Study Abroad photo contest. His winning entry, a stunning bird’s-eye panorama of the mountains of Cappadocia, Turkey, taken from a hot air balloon, wasn’t just a snapshot of a pretty foreign vista; it literally changed the way he looked at the planet.

“Sites like Cappadocia force me to throw my worldly preconceptions in the trash,” Quigley said on his travel blog, A Quig Abroad. The blog features more astounding images from his time in Turkey.

“I've seen forests, mountains, beaches, cities, deserts…but never anything like the natural structures of Cappadocia,” Quigley said. “It broadened my conception of what the natural world could create and brought to my attention that ‘secrets’ like this are hiding all around the world. It made me wonder what other strange and beautiful landscapes, structures, etc., exist around the planet and where.”

While Quigley may have won, the runners-up of the Drexel Study Abroad photo contest are no less striking. Each photo captures a moment that was just beyond the reach of the photographer’s formerly everyday experience, from sunsets in Rome to a Ferris wheel turning over a city in Belgium.

You can view the entire gallery of broadened horizons here.

1st Place - Cory Quigley, Turkey: "Drifting in an air balloon above alienesque Cappadocia"
2nd Place - Chris Siracusa, Italy: "The view from AUR"
3rd Place - Nick Ricciutti, Czech Republic: "If you really want something you have to reach"
4th Place - Grace Farrow, Chile: "Colorful day in the city"
5th Place - Alissa Reichert, Belgium: "Ghent"