Shutter Mike Photography

It is time again for the National Geographic and Energizer Ultimate Photo Contest.  Last year’s winner was the perfect combination of perfect timing, a dedicated photographer, photographic skill and just a dash of luck.  There are six categories in which you can submit photos for this year’s contest; Animals/Wildlife, Nature/Weather, Travel/Cultures, Family/Community, Arts/Music, and Action/Energy.  If you are ambitious you can even enter one photo per theme.  All the nitty gritty details and contest rules can be found here.

The judge in this year’s contest is National Geographic photographer, Jim Richardson.  His work has been featured in 45 National Geographic stories as well as TIME, Life, the New  York Times and many more.  You can check out a gallery of Jim Richardson’s photography for inspiration and get you set for winning one of the first place prizes and hopefully the grand prize.   The 6 first place winners, one in each category, will get a prize package made up of several Energizer battery requiring gadgets.  For the lucky grand prize winner they get a National Geographic vacation package for two to their choice of Alaska, Bhutan, or Morocco.  (I’ll take Bhutan)

Oscar winning director Ron Howard and camera giant Canon have teamed up for Project Imagin8ion.  This photography contest sets out to find 8 photographs to inspire the 8 themes of a Hollywood short film by Ron Howard.  The 8 themes (and the 8 categories to submit your photographs) are setting, time, character, mood, relationship, goal, obstacle and the unknown.   You can submit entries for the Setting, Time, Character and Mood categories from May 22nd through June 2nd and to the Relationship, Goal, Obstacle and The Unknown categories from June 3rd through June 14th.

The 8 winning photos will be used as inspiration for an element of the short film by Ron Howard.  In addition the winning photographers will win a trip to New York City for the film’s premier along with Canon equipment.

Hubert Januar’s winning photograph in the Sony World Photography 2011 Open Competition may stir some emotions in parts of the world where cock fighting is not the (legal) norm.  But a photograph that can evoke an emotional response or spark a debate is one of the best kinds of photographs.  And from a technical perspective he did it right; from capturing the split second action of the birds to choosing black and white to convey the mood, this photo is very well done.

Carlos Henrique Reinesch from Brazil won the Sony World Photography 2011 Open Competition in the smile category with his image titled A Blast of Color. Reinesch explains that the colorful wrist bands being sold by the smiling street vendor are tied to the church fence behind the man after making a wish.

Chumlong Nilkon captured the winning photograph in the After Dark category of Sony’s World Photography 2011 Open Competition.  Entitled Yee Peng the image shows the lanterns of the Festival of Light as they float off into the night sky.  Nilkon says “We believe that [the lanterns are] symbolic of problems and worries floating away.”

The winning entry in Sony World Photography’s 2011 Open competition for the panorama category belongs to Wolfgang Weinhardt.  The image was taken in Agra, India and Weinhardt describes it as “A single soul stepped into history.”  Is it about this lone person in red being in the right place at the right time or the historic significance of the Indian architecture?  Or is it left up to the observer?  In any case, the image speaks volumes and is beautifully composed.

The photographer behind the winning image in travel category of the Sony World Photography Open Competition 2011 is James Chong from Singapore.  His entry titled Going to Work captures the light beautifully as it finds its way through the trees to the farmer and his oxen below.

I love the perspective Marek Troszczynski captured of the Natural History Museum in London.  The use of black and white also really makes this image stand out.  Marek’s photograph is the architecture category winner in the 2011 Sony World Photography Open Competition.  He will now be competing for the $5000 top prize in London next month.

This is the 4th of the ten Sony World Photography 2011 contest winners.  Edina Csoboth’s photograph is in the fashion category and she did an awesome job incorporating the urban scene into her fashion shoot.  I love the motion from the traffic and the lighting.

The next winning entry in the Sony World Photography 2011 contest is also from Indonesia.   Andiyan Lutfi’s photograph is in the Nature/Wildlife category and is a great macro photograph.