The Camera Jabber Photographer of the Year competition is run on Photocrowd over 12 months with a different theme each month. Every month, the ‘expert judged’ winner selected by the Jabber team goes onto the shortlist for the overall winner. The ‘crowd judged’ winning image also gets to be featured here on Camera Jabber.
The start of July marks the halfway point in this year’s contest and it’s a good time to look back on both sets of winners for each month so far.
January: Frosty Landscapes won by David Southern
The theme for January was ‘Frosty Landscapes’ and with over 2,700 entries from more than 1,700 photographers, the competition was tough. However, after a gruelling judging phase that saw some superb snowy landscapes ruled out for missing the ‘frosty landscapes’ brief, we can reveal that the January 2021 expert judged winner is ‘Jack Frost’s Fingers’ by David Southern, known as Hedgepig on Photocrowd.
David shot his image in Cumbria in the UK using a Canon EOS 6D Mark II with a EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM at 110mm and f/11 at 1/250sec and ISO 200.
We felt that the inclusion of the gate in this image really pulls everything together, giving your eye somewhere to settle. David handled the exposure very well, with the sunlight bringing out the detail of the frosty twigs and branches of the trees. It’s a worthy winner of the Frosty Landscapes contest.
January contest crowd winner
There were over 143,000 votes cast in the January round of the competition and we’re delighted to announce that the most popular image was ‘Winter Rose’ by hwat.
hwat says shot this image on the edge of Loch Achanalt near Strathbran in the Highlands of Scotland. He used a medium format camera loaded with Fujifilm Velvia film and scanned the transparency to upload it to Photocrowd.
hwat says, ‘this area is all but inaccessible at any other time of year as it involves crossing a significant amount of extremely boggy ground… At minus 14 degrees Celcius it was frozen and only the outflow remained fluid. I waited for the pre-dawn sunrise to colour up the sky and took this close to the frozen grasses in the foreground.’
February: Garden birds won by Donna Ruiz
February’s round proved even more popular than January’s with 3,300 images entered from 1,900 photographers. Robins were a favourite subject but in the end, it was Donna Ruiz‘s image of a hummingbird enjoying some water spray that caught the judges’ eyes.
February contest crowd winner
Hummingbirds were also popular with the crowd voters and of the 159,000 votes cast, the biggest proportion went to Jim for his wonderful image of a ruby-throated hummingbird getting ready for a fight.
March: Kitchen macro won by Welma
Our kitchen macro challenge proved very tough but as usual, the Camera Jabber community rose to it and we saw some superb images. However, we were all drawn to Welma‘s image of microdroplets of condensation on a bottle in her fridge. The intense blue and the division in the droplet size make for a very striking shot.
March contest crowd winner
It was an image of a single waterdrop that drew the most votes from the crowd. That description doesn’t do Pavel Svozil‘s image justice though. His careful focusing, superb timing, paired with an interesting background refracted in the water make for an arresting image.
April: Rain won by Pawel Wewiorski
Our rain theme was very popular and we were treated to lots of images of people rushing through storms, animals sheltering and moody rain-lashed landscapes. Pawel Wewiorski‘s image stood out from the crowd with a clever, humorous take on the subject. Pawel shot the image on a Canon EOS 5D with an EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM at 24mm and f/4.
April contest crowd winner
A combination of the clearly visible and attractively blurred heavy rain, plus the bright colours in Giulio Montimes’ (AKA Giulio61 on Photocrowd) image helped to secure him the top spot with the crowd. It’s a superb shot and a worthy winner.
May: spring flowers won by Chris Hall
With around 4,700 images entered from approximately 3,000 photographers, the May sping flowers challenge was one of our most popular to date. There was a riot of colour, but ultimately we selected Chris Hall‘s more subdued image of two faded daffodils in a glass vase as our winner. We love the lighting and the way it reveals the detail in the delicate petals.
May contest crowd winner
The crowd vote went to this beautiful image of pulsatilas by Scifier. It was also popular at Jabber HQ for its attractive combination of subtle colour, fine detail and shallow depth of field.
June: outdoor portraits won by Trevor Cole
Trevor Cole‘s image, shot on a Nikon D850, is, in essence, a very simple portrait, but everything is done extremely well. The focus is perfect while using an aperture of f/2.8 at 200mm delivers shallow depth of field so that the girl’s eyes really stand out and pull you into the shot. The beads around her neck along with the scarf over her head also help to frame her face and the exposure is spot on.
June contest crowd winner
Almost 193,900 votes were cast in our outdoor portraits contest and there were 2,800 entries from 1,700 photographers. The crowd selected Masha Parkhomenka‘s beautiful portrait, shot with the Canon EOS 5D Mark IV, as their winner. Congratulations Masha!
Camera Jabber Photographer of the Year 2021/22
The July round Camera Jabber Photographer of the Year competition is now open for entries on Photocrowd. The theme is ‘Summer Sport’. Follow the link to take a look at the images submitted so far and to submit your own entry.
The monthly prize for the expert judged winners is a license for DxO PhotoLab 4 Elite worth £179. The winning photographers also go onto the shortlist to win an overall prize of Nik Collection 4 by DxO worth £133 and the title Camera Jabber Photographer of the Year 2022.