Photography Awards and Competitions

It is said this is the season to be merry, I know, whoever said that was mistaken, but it seems to me this is the season to be inundated with the outcome of photography competitions and awards. In the past I have produced separate posts on each but I have decided to roll them into one this time as it does all get a bit boring otherwise.

Landscape photographer of the Year

Travel Photographer of the Year

Sony World Photography Awards

Nature Photographer of the Year National Geographic

Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Magnum Photography Awards

International Garden Photographer of the Year

Photographer of The Year Panoawards

Taylor Wessing Portrait Photography Award

Urban Photography Awards

This one is always a winner

Henri Cartier Bresson – Sunday on the banks of the River Marne 1938

 

 

 

‘I take portraits of gods’: Nobuyuki Kobayashi

With his gorgeous and patiently realised black and white images, Kobayashi searches for a spiritual dimension in the calm beauty of nature. Using a large-format 8×10 camera, the platinum palladium printing technique and sumptuous paper, Kobayashi fills his nature photography with a deep sensuality. An exhibition of his work, Portraits of Nature: Myriads of Gods, is at Sway Gallery, London, to 28 March. All photos: Nobuyuki Kobayashi

As seen in The Guardian

Kodou Platinum prints allow for deep dark tones and create a beautiful matte finish

Souzou Kobayashi prints on Hosokawa paper, a product that has been made in the same way since 1642. He says he uses this paper to add a ‘Japanese identity’ to his work

Zen ‘I just keep walking around until I can find a place that incites my emotions,’ says Kobayashi. ‘I feel as though I am not the one who finds places to shoot but am led there by places’

Shin ‘Strength, beauty and nobleness: all characteristics reveal themselves to me’

See more here

Landscape Photographer of the Year 2016

The Take A View Landscape Photographer of the Year 2016 awards have now been given out. Landscape photography is such a popular subject area, maybe only second to Wildlife Photographer of The Year in terms of awards interest. This year there are again a wide range of images covering many different areas of what is called landscape and most people would find something they like. Here are some

Damian Ward
Caister-on-Sea, taken at the town in Norfolk, won the Adobe prize
Photograph: Damian Ward/PA

Martin Birks
Chrome Hill, taken in the Peak District, Derbyshire, won the Living the View award
Photograph: Martin Birks/PA

Mark Gilligan
Finding Gold, taken in Wast Water in Cumbria, which won the Great Britain #OMGB ‘Home of Amazing Moments’ award
Photograph: Mark Gilligan/PA

Rachael Talibart
Maelstrom, Storm Imogen, taken at Newhaven, East Sussex, won the Sunday Times Magazine award
Photograph: Rachael Talibart/PA

Hannah Faith Jackson
Mirror Bar, taken in Glasgow, won the young landscape photographer of the year award
Photograph: Hannah Faith Jackson/PA

This picture of the starlings off the cost at Brighton is the overall winner

Matthew Cattell
Starling Vortex, taken in Brighton, East Sussex, won the landscape photographer of the year award
Photograph: Matthew Cattell/PA

Tony Higginson
Shifting Sands, taken in Silverdale, Lancashire, which won the Your View award
Photograph: Tony Higginson/PA

Here is a list of all of the winners

Have a look at last years winners here

 

 

Magical Land Art By Andy Goldsworthy

I have been a huge fan of Andy Golsdworthy for many years and have a number of his books. He is a sculptor who creates such ephemeral works that only photography can capture them before they dissolve, melt, blow away or sink back into the waters. Here are some of his works but you can see more on Bored Panda

Andy Goldsworthy is a British sculptor, renowned in his field, that creates temporary installations out of sticks and stones, and anything and everything else that he finds outside. The son of a mathematician, Goldsworthy grew up working on farms before eventually getting his BA from what is now the University of Central Lancashire. “A lot of my work is like picking potatoes,” he told the Guardian. “You have to get into the rhythm of it.”

Much of Goldsworthy’s work is transient and ephemeral, leading many to view it as a comment on the Earth’s fragility. But for Goldsworthy, the picture is more complex.

“When I make something, in a field or street, it may vanish but it’s part of the history of those places,” he says in another interview. “In the early days my work was about collapse and decay. Now some of the changes that occur are too beautiful to be described as simply decay. At Folkestone I got up early one morning ahead of an incoming tide and covered a boulder in poppy petals. It was calm and the sea slowly and gently washed away the petals, stripping the boulder and creating splashes of red in the sea. The harbour from which many troops left for war was in the background.”

see more here

Andy Goldsworthy

Melt

Andy Goldsworthy – Land Art video

 

The 40 best photos of London ever taken from Time Out

This is an interesting and varied mix of images found in Time Out magazine. Hard to know the criteria by which they have been deemed the best images of London ‘ever’ as there seems to be no discernible link or structure to them. In one instance a memorable news picture, Thatcher leaving Downing Street, in the next a man on the underground with nipple clamps. Clearly some have been chosen because they were taken by famous photographers and others because of the moment but the randomness is fun. Have a look, let me know what you think.

London, you’re beautiful. No, scrap that. London, you’re wild. Angry. Delicious. How do you sum up a city that changes its look as often as its underwear and always has plenty to say? That’s the challenge we set ourselves when we decided to draw up a definitive list of the best photographs ever taken of the capital. In making our selection we had help. Serious help: Wolfgang Tillmans, Juergen Teller, Nick Waplington, Dorothy Bohm and Eamonn McCabe are among the world-famous photographers who shaped our selection. We also picked the brains of the top London photography brass at museums including the Tate, V&A, Museum of London and Imperial War Museum. The result: a celebration of London’s architecture, its icons and its geography, but also of us: Londoners at work, at play, protesting, rising to a challenge and always ready for our close-up. 

Ken Lennox: Margaret Thatcher leaving Downing Street, 1990

Downing Street has witnessed major political events, of course, but the actual drama mainly happens behind closed doors. Not so with Margaret Thatcher’s tearful, final departure from Number 10 in 1990, when it was hard to know which was more startling: the suddenness of her ousting, or the Iron Lady displaying human emotions.

© Ken Lennox/Mirrorpix

Mo Farah winning the 5,000 metres at the London Olympic Games, 2012

We screamed a lot during the 2012 London Olympics: at the telly, at home, in pubs, and at each other. But nowhere was the din as loud as in the Olympic Stadium when Mo Farah claimed his second Olympic gold by winning the 5,000 metres. The sound of the 80,000-strong crowd was so loud that the camera at the finish line started to shake, warping the image. ‘Nothing captures the fervour, the noise and the enjoyment of London 2012 more than this image,’ says Time Out photographer Rob Greig. ‘It’s a picture taken by 80,000 people.’

Bill Brandt: Francis Bacon, 1963

German-born Brandt produced mainly portraits and landscapes – and this study, ostensibly of the painter Francis Bacon, shows his mastery of both. It’s hard to tell which aspect is the most severe, the most sullenly evocative: the dark, stormy sky; the angled stripe of pathway up Primrose Hill; or the glowering snarl across Bacon’s face.

© Bill Brandt Archive

Tom Hunter: Woman Reading a Possession Order, 1998

Bathed in a beautiful morning light, Tom Hunter’s young woman looks likes she’s stepped out of Johannes Vermeer’s seventeenth-century masterpiece ‘Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window’. The narrative, though, is pure late twentieth-century. Fillipa is a squatter reading an eviction notice from Hackney Council. Hunter, at the time a fellow member of Hackney’s squatter community, shot the image for his ‘Persons Unknown’ series. It went on to win the John Kobal National Portrait award and has shown around the world. ‘I never envisaged this response to a photograph I took of my neighbour and friend in a squat one sunny morning in Hackney,’ he says. ‘But its intimate depiction of the mother and child in a moment of vulnerability seems to resonate in a universal way.’

© Tom Hunter

Charlie Phillips: Notting Hill Couple, 1967

A cool shot of a stylish couple. What could be simpler? Taken at a party in Notting Hill in 1967, this isn’t the most immediately momentous of Charlie Phillips’s photographs, which include images of global icons such as Muhammad Ali and the first images of a fledgling Notting Hill Carnival, as well as intimate photos of Windrush-generation west Londoners. But it’s a picture that speaks volumes about London living and loving. As Phillips remembers, at the time being in a mixed-race relationship meant you’d get ‘louts shouting “nigger lover” from the windows of their cars as they passed’. Thankfully, those days are gone, but issues of race, visibility and Notting Hill’s heritage still occupy the photographer. ‘What really pisses me off,’ Phillips told us when we spoke to him last year, ‘is when they made that horrible film, “Notting Hill”. There wasn’t even one person of bloody colour in it!’

© Charlie Phillips/www.akehurstcreativemanagement.com

Eve Arnold: One of Four Girls Sharing an Apartment, 1961

London in the early ’60s, before it began to swing, was really more like the ’50s: a little bit dismal, a bit pokey and dowdy – still dusting itself off from its postwar blues, not yet ready to embrace the Technicolor future. Arnold’s wonderfully moody photograph seems to capture that in-between era perfectly.

© Eve Arnold/Magnum

Tim Peake: London from Space, 2016

We’ve all been high on a Saturday night but, orbiting 400 kilometres above the earth, British astronaut Major Tim Peake takes the (freeze-dried) biscuit for altitude. Shot from the International Space Station at midnight on Saturday January 31, 2016, his image of London, its skeins of twinkling lights shining brightest around Oxford Street and Regent Street, is the most recent image in our top 40 and the ultimate establishing shot. ‘I’d rather be up here… but only just!! #toughcall,’ Peake told Twitter as he flew past at 17,150 miles per hour.

© ESA/NASA

See the rest of the 40 best ‘ever’ here

This looks more interesting photography in London, exhibitions, competitions etc

2015 UK Mountain Photo of the Year.

I had never heard of this competition and given the difficulties involved it attracted rather less entries than many of the other POTY awards I have been featuring recently, this I found on the BBC website

Edinburgh resident Paul Brett has won Trail Magazine’s

Paul Brett beat off competition from more than 500 others to win first prize

After pausing to take the photograph, he rejoined a friend to finish an ascent of Britain’s highest mountain.

On the way up he slipped and had to use his ice axe to arrest a potentially dangerous slide down the peak. 

He told Trail: “It was a perfect spring day with no wind.

“After cresting the summit of Carn Dearg Meadhonach we were rewarded with this amazing view. My friend was already heading up Carn Mor Dearg, which really helped give an amazing sense of scale to the scene.”

He added: “I had to use the pick of my ice axe to stop myself sliding down the mountain on the push to the summit of Ben Nevis, which was very scary at the time – but it was good to know I had the knowledge to do what was needed.”

Snowdon, Snowdonia, by Dave Atkinson

Glyder Fawr, Snowdonia, by Robin Shaw

See more of these mountain images here

Take a View landscape photographer of the year 2015

Another Landscape Photographer of The Year Award. This is the prestigious Take A View award this article in the Guardian shows 20 of the winning entries

The winners of this year’s Take a View landscape photographer of the year awards have been announced. Founded in 2006, the awards celebrate the British landscape

Zigzag, Wensleydale, North Yorkshire, by Lizzie Shepherd – winner of the living the view category.

Photograph: Lizzie Shepherd/PA

Pont Fawr and river Conwy, Llanrwst, Conwy, by Julian Elliott – winner of the countryside is great award.

Photograph: Julian Elliott/PA

Bat’s Head, Dorset, by Andy Farrer – this year’s overall winner.

Photograph: Andy Farrer/PA

Freightliner Coal Train, Ribblehead Viaduct, North Yorkshire, by Robert France – winner of the Network Rail lines in the landscape category.

Photograph: Robert France/PA

See the rest of the pictures in The Guardian here

Here is a link to the Take A View website

 

 

2015 INTERNATIONAL LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR: LUKE AUSTIN

There are many photographers of the year. They cover every genre of photography and in the landscape area there are a number. This one is the 2015 International Landscape Photographer of the Year.

Congratulations to Luke Austin of Perth, Australia for winning the International Landscape Photographer of the Year 2015. His portfolio of four images, after much discussion and deliberation between the judges, was elevated to first place with a cash prize of US $5000, a bespoke copy of the International Landscape Photographer of the Year book printed by Momento, and a trophy.

FIRST PRIZE INTERNATIONAL LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR 2015: LUKE AUSTIN

2015 INTERNATIONAL LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPH OF THE YEAR

And congratulations also to Luke Tscharke for winning the International Landscape Photograph of the Year 2015. The ‘Photograph’ is different from the ‘Photographer’ in that this is the single best image overall as determined by the judging panel, whereas the ‘Photographer’ is the best four images. Luke wins a cash prize of US $2000, a bespoke copy of the International Landscape Photographer of the Year book printed by Momento, and a trophy.

In second place was Luke Austin and third place Warren Keelan.

THE 2015 LONG EXPOSURE AWARD: GRANT GALBRAITH

You can see the rest of the winners here

Travel Photographer of the Year

The BBC has an extended article with lots of images from Travel Photographer of the Year This award has been going for some years and attracts a really marvellous set of images from around the world, if you are interested in travel, peoples, landscapes, cities, in fact pretty much everything then the TPOTY site is a must and you should bookmark it now.

This is from the BBC site

From the harsh reality of the natural world, to stunning beauty seen at some of the planet’s remotest locations – the best images from the latest Travel Photographer of the Year competition are now on show in London.

For a photograph to stand out from the crowd, says Caroline Metcalfe of TPOTY‘s judging panel, it must provoke an immediate emotional response.

“It then has to draw me in and make me want to linger for more than a few seconds.”

A former director of photography at Conde Nast Traveller magazine, with a 20-year pedigree in the business, Metcalfe has been looking through some of the images which made the judges’ final selection for TPOTY 2014 – including two sets from Philip Lee Harvey which earned him the top prize.

Himba Tribe, Namibia – Philip Lee Harvey/www.tpoty.com

 

Lalibela, Ethiopia – Philip Lee Harvey/www.tpoty.com

TPOTY website says: The Travel Photographer of the Year (TPOTY) photo contest is run by photographers for photographers. Whether you are amateur or professional, beginner or expert, young or old, wherever you live in the world, TPOTY is for you!

2015 sees TPOTY’s 13th award, with new categories and new opportunities to showcase the best travel photography. Entries open from 28th May. You can view the latest winners in the 2014 Winners Gallery or in our latest book, Journey Seven.

Riviera Maya, Mexico – Terry Steeley/www.tpoty.com

Norway – Piotr Trybalski/www.tpoty.com

Java, Indonesia – Sue O’Connell/www.tpoty.com

El Tatio geyser field, Chile – Ignacio Palacios/www.tpoty.com

Salar de Uyuni (salt flat), Uyuni, Bolivia – Ignacio Palacios/www.tpoty.com

North of Svalbard in the Arctic – Joshua Holko/www.tpoty.com

All 2014 finalists from Travel Photographer of the Year can be seen at the Royal Geographical Society in Kensington, London, until 5 September 2015.

Our next travel photography course starts in November

Rocks in the sky: a geological mystery – in pictures

As found in The Guardian If you’ve never seen a huge boulder hovering above the Earth against a brilliant blue sky, where have you been? As David Quentin’s photographs show, rocks in the sky have been spotted everywhere from Cumbria to Québec. Quentin’s photos aren’t fakes … but the rocks might not be quite what they seem

‘I have been photographing rocks in the sky for five years. It started off as an attempt at a simple visual pun; I was walking on the South Downs and on a whim I threw a piece of chalk up into the sky to photograph it there because it was as white as a cloud. The photograph turned out pretty badly, and I became fascinated with the technical challenge of making photographs of rocks in the sky work.’

All photographs: David Quentin. The series was first published in issue 36 of Five Dials