Sometime ago I entered a handful of images into New Zealand Geographic magazines photographer of the year competition. Days before the finalists were announced, Andris Apse (usually a judge) posted a selected image on his facebook page. Jokingly I said I must have missed my email.
I had, it was in my spam folder. 
The judges had selected one of my images to be amongst the 6 Landscape category finalists.
So last week (27th October) we flew up to Auckland to attend the award night at the Auckland museum, what a fantastic building, will certainly have to head back and have a look around. All the images were on display from the 4 categories. All were as expected very high quality, with John Doogan & Laurie Williams images impressing me most out of the landscape shots.
Well , on to the announcements. Which is all a bit of a blur! James Frankham (Editor of New Zealand Geographic) typically announced the results in reverse order. With the first 2 images (Andris Apse and Vaughan Brookfield) getting Highly Commended I think I started to shake, as does Pam! 2 more Highly Commends for Katrin Koervers & John Doogan and there are 2 images left.
Then Laurie Williams image is displayed as runner up. At this point I’m engulfed in hugs and handshakes (thanks Flickr crowd!), and my image is show as the winner of the 2011 New Zealand Geographic Photographer of the year Landscape category! Somehow I managed not to fall over as I accepted the ‘lump of acrylic’, print and managed to stumble through some kind of speech (non prepared and the Panasonic add skit didnt seem appropriate at the time!).
The overall winner ended up being Brett Phibbs, a superb photographer who currently works for the New Zealand Herald.
All the finalists can be seen on the NZ Geographic website here. Photos of the event are available through Getty here.
And my winning image is available though Getty for licence here (the full frame not just the crop entered, slightly different processing too).
My other Getty images are here.
Overall it was a fantastic evening and such a surprise I won considering the quality of the other entrants, and most of them are working pro’s too. All the winners/finalists are published in the November/December issue of the magazine so get out and find a copy!
Big congrats to my friend Jocelen Janon for Highly commended in the Society and Culture category.
New Zealand Geographic Winner!
Sometime ago I entered a handful of images into New Zealand Geographic magazines photographer of the year competition. Days before the finalists were announced, Andris Apse (usually a judge) posted a selected image on his facebook page. Jokingly I said I must have missed my email.
I had, it was in my spam folder.
The judges had selected one of my images to be amongst the 6 Landscape category finalists.
So last week (27th October) we flew up to Auckland to attend the award night at the Auckland museum, what a fantastic building, will certainly have to head back and have a look around. All the images were on display from the 4 categories. All were as expected very high quality, with John Doogan & Laurie Williams images impressing me most out of the landscape shots.
Well , on to the announcements. Which is all a bit of a blur! James Frankham (Editor of New Zealand Geographic) typically announced the results in reverse order. With the first 2 images (Andris Apse and Vaughan Brookfield) getting Highly Commended I think I started to shake, as does Pam! 2 more Highly Commends for Katrin Koervers & John Doogan and there are 2 images left.
Then Laurie Williams image is displayed as runner up. At this point I’m engulfed in hugs and handshakes (thanks Flickr crowd!), and my image is show as the winner of the 2011 New Zealand Geographic Photographer of the year Landscape category! Somehow I managed not to fall over as I accepted the ‘lump of acrylic’, print and managed to stumble through some kind of speech (non prepared and the Panasonic add skit didnt seem appropriate at the time!).
The overall winner ended up being Brett Phibbs, a superb photographer who currently works for the New Zealand Herald.
All the finalists can be seen on the NZ Geographic website here. Photos of the event are available through Getty here.
And my winning image is available though Getty for licence here (the full frame not just the crop entered, slightly different processing too).
My other Getty images are here.
Overall it was a fantastic evening and such a surprise I won considering the quality of the other entrants, and most of them are working pro’s too. All the winners/finalists are published in the November/December issue of the magazine so get out and find a copy!
Big congrats to my friend Jocelen Janon for Highly commended in the Society and Culture category.