OREANDA-NEWS. United Airlines and Amigos de las Americas (AMIGOS) today announced the winner of the 2015 Latin America Photo Contest. Maria Fernanda Antillon Medina, 26, of Leon, Guanajuato, Mexico, took the prize-winning photo entitled "Florencia y su calido hogar" in Patacancha, Peru, in September. She will receive two round-trip coach travel certificates to a United destination of her choice in the United States or Central America.

Antillon, an architect whose passions also include adventure traveling and drawing, visited the rural community of Patacancha near Ollantaytambo, an Inca archaeological site close to The Sacred Valley of the Incas, where she met Florencia, pictured in the photo. Florencia invited Antillon and her friend into her home to show them her handmade textiles and offer them a meal and tea.

"The silence was so perfect and profound, the only thing I could hear was the water boiling and the clink of the pots," said Antillon. "The light was coming in through the window shining on Florencia's face, adding a touch of mysticism to the atmosphere, which is when I decided to take the photo."

"Maria Fernanda's photo captures the magical essence of Latin America," said Maria Cristina Osorio, United's director of communications - Latin America. "We congratulate her and the other photographers who participated in the AMIGOS Latin America photo contest. United is very pleased to support AMIGOS and to connect cultures throughout the Americas."

Antillon plans to use her United ticket to travel to national parks, where she hopes to find inspiration in nature that she can transfer to her architectural work.

Honorable mentions went to Johana Cortez-Hernandez, a 19-year-old student from East Palo Alto California attending Connecticut College, and Molly Miller-Petrie, a 28-year-old research analyst from Seattle, Washington. Cortez-Hernandez took her photo of a Mayan woman making tortillas in Yucatan, Mexico, last summer during her work as an AMIGOS Project Supervisor. Molly Miller-Petrie, an AMIGOS volunteer in 2006, took her photo of the Mombacho volcano in Caterina, Nicaragua, while visiting her host family in October 2015.