The theme for the seventh round of the Camera Jabber Photographer of the Year (CJPOTY) competition was ‘City Life’ and there was a wide interpretation of the brief – which we love to see.
Now, we can reveal that the following images will go onto our shortlist to be judged by our illustrious panel at the end of the year. There are two talented entrants who have more than one image shortlisted!
One of these ten shortlisted images has also been selected as the round winner with the photographer being awarded a voucher from MPB worth £500 – scroll down to find out who.
CJPOTY July 2022 City Life shortlisted images
Lynne Blount
Lynne shot her image, ‘City Stranger’ in London’s Brick Lane, using the striking graffiti as a backdrop. Lynne says she saw the potential of the scene but had to wait ages before three people walked into the frame and she was able to capture an image with her Olympus OM-D E-M1 and Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-40mm f/2.8 PRO lens.
Lynne’s second shortlisted image was captured using a Canon PowerShot G15 compact camera. It’s actually created from two main images, one of the saxophonist and another shot of More London, captured with a slow shutter speed to create the sense of hustle and bustle. Lynne also applied a couple of ‘texture’ layers that she shot specifically for the image. It’s easy to imagine yourself in the scene and walking towards the busker.
Sara Jazbar
Sara tells us that she saw this girl and her dog approaching, she explains ‘she was very intent on her phone and the dog was all over the place. I swiftly changed my camera settings and I waited for them to pass in front of me. Right there, the dog stopped to smell something on the ground and the girl was pulling it to move on while never taking her eyes from the phone. In that instant, I saw a story and I clicked. Sara shot the image with her Nikon D500 and Tokina 11-20mm f/2.8 lens.
Sara’s second image was also captured with her Nikon D500, but this time she used her Nikon AF-S Nikkor 24-120mm f/4G ED VR lens and got something very different. Sara explains, ‘there is this huge public housing area in Trieste (Italy) called Melara. There are hundreds of people living there, like in a beehive. I went one evening to take some pictures, set-up my tripod and camera, and waited for the blue hour and for some lights to turn on. I stayed there almost three hours waiting for the right conditions and situations to arise, it was an added bonus that I could see people through the lit windows as well.’
Monica Vella
We love the big splash of colour and the reflection of the city of Berlin in Monica’s image. Those converging lines really pull you in and then, if you look carefully, you spot the two people towards the right, adding a sense of scale. Monica captured her image using her Nikon D750 and 24-70mm f/2.8 lens.
Joy Tracy
Joy’s image is very well spotted and perfectly timed. She visited Liverpool’s docks at exactly the right time of day to get the shadows on the bottom of the building and fired off her Olympus Pen F at just the right moment as the cyclist and two other people went by.
Nadja Wendt
Nadja tells us that ‘it was a rainy grey day in Birmingham, when suddenly this gentleman walked into the picture. With his bright yellow trousers he stood out against everybody else with their dark coats.’ His determined stride in the foreground of the image also injects some dynamism. Nadja captured the image with her Fujifilm X-T4 and XF 35mm f/2 R WR lens.
John Thorndike
John Thorndike captured this fabulous image on Steep Hill in Lincoln using his Canon EOS 7D Mark II. It works very well in black and white. We like the mother’s determined expression and the sleepy faces of her children as they are bumped over the cobblestones.
Mervin Straughan
We were struck by the juxtaposition of the police officers on their motorbikes and the cathedral in Mervin’s image shot outside St. Gile’s Cathedral on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh. The black and white processing could easily lead you to think it’s an old image, but the motorbikes instantly bring you back to the current day. Mervin captured his image using a Sony RX100 Mark III.
Stephanie Chadwick
We love how old is meeting new in the sunny streets of Seville in Stephanie’s image, capture using a Sony RX10. Stephanie found herself a great shooting angle so the shadow of the horse and carriage reach out towards her. She also must have waited a while and been quick off the mark as Segway riders don’t tend to hang around for long!
CJPOTY July 2022 winner: Sara Jazbar
Congratulations Sara, a voucher to the value of £500 from MPB is heading your way! It’s the second time that Sara has won a round so she now has a nice pot of cash to treat herself to a new (to her) lens, camera or accessory.
Sara’s image will join the other nine in our shortlist to be judged for the overall prize at the end of the year.
CJPOTY August 2022: Shadows
The theme for the eighth round of the Camera Jabber Photographer of the Year (CJPOTY) competition is ‘Shadows’. We’d like to see images that feature shadows either as the main subject or as a key element
This round of our monthly competition is open for submissions until 23:59 BST (00:59 CET and 15:59 PST) on 31st August 2022.
To submit your entry, visit cjpoty.com. You can submit up to three entries for £2.00 plus payment processing costs (£0.26).
Photographing shadow
The sun can be very harsh at this time of year in the northern hemisphere, but that plays into our hands when we’re looking to photograph shadows. The strong sunlight creates patches of bright light and deep shadows that move throughout the day as the sun progresses across the sky. Ordinarily, the high contrast can be problematic and some camera’s aren’t able to capture detail in both the shadows and the highlights, but with shadow photography, you often want to emphasise them by underexposing. This means you get detail in the highlights while shadows stand out well.
Camera Jabber Photographer of the Year prizes
At the end of the month, the Camera Jabber team will pick one winning image and nine runners up from the June entries. The photographer of the winning image will receive a voucher from MPB.com to the value of £500 which can be spent on anything from a huge range of kit from the World’s biggest platform for used photographic gear.
All 10 of the selected images will go into our shortlist for the year.
We’ll do this each month in 2022 so that by the end of the year, there will be 120 shortlisted images. These will then go before our fantastic panel of judges who will decide the 1st, 2nd and 3rd-placed images. You don’t have to enter the competition every month, but you are welcome to do so and the more shortlisted images you have at the end of the year, the greater than chance of winning the top prize.
The photographer of the first-placed image overall, as decided by the panel of judges, will received a voucher to the value of £1000 from MPB.com as well as a trophy and the title ‘Camera Jabber Photographer of the Year 2023‘. The photographers who come second and third will receive vouchers worth £500 and £250 respectively.
The judges are:
Ben Brain – Photographer, journalist & Sigma ambassador
Sophie Collins – Chief Marketing Office at MPB
Donna Crous – Food photographer, author, Nikon Europe ambassador and Rotolight Master of Light
Kate Hopewell-Smith – Wedding, portrait & boudoir photographer, Sony ambassador
Sanjay Jogia – Wedding photographer & Canon ambassador
Pete Reed OBE – Three times Olympic gold medal-winning rower and keen documentary photographer
Dominique Shaw – Photographer and co-founder of York Place Studios and Fujifilm ambassador
Craig Strong – Lensbaby founder
Christina Vaughan – Founder of Cultura Creative, the home of inclusive stock photography
Jeremy Walker – Landscape photographer, author & former Nikon ambassador
About MPB
Founded by Matt Barker in 2011, MPB is the world’s largest platform for used photography and videography kit. MPB has transformed the way people buy, sell and trade equipment, making photography more accessible, affordable and sustainable.
Headquartered in the creative communities of Brighton, Brooklyn and Berlin, the MPB team includes trained camera experts and seasoned photographers and videographers who bring their passion to work every day to deliver outstanding service. Every piece of kit is inspected carefully by product specialists and comes with a six-month warranty to give customers peace of mind that buying used doesn’t mean sacrificing reliability.