Contest Winners

Contest Is Now Closed • View Our Entries and Winners

Links To Our 2011 Contest Entries

Amateur Entries • Pro Entries • Awards Page • Contest Rules • Finalists • Winners

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Alien Skin Software • Manfrotto USA • Kata Bags

Our First Contest Full of Surprises

This has been our first contest and frankly, we were all surprised at the tremendous international support our contest has received. Over 800 photographers sent in close to 2,000 images in the two months this contest was open to submissions.

The popular votes helped us identify those images that our visitors thought were the best, but in many cases it also meant our photographers were very good at using their web and social networking contacts to bring eyes to all of our entries and we thank you all for helping us get the attention you all deserve.

Although we had three official judges we did also ask some other industry experts to help us narrow the selection down a bit. Because the contest was open to so many countries, was free of any fees and was wide open to a “Best Photo”, it made it even more difficult to narrow down. We saw many beautiful sunsets, landscapes, nature shots and others and then it became clear that it would be even more difficult to compare a macro shot of a butterfly with a majestic landscape. So we were forced to make decisions that would offer some balance and would show the enormous talent our photographers have.

As you can see by reviewing the original entries, we received about 92% of the images from non-professional photographers. We called them Amateurs for the sake of the contest, but you can see they are certainly not amateurs in terms of the skill level they have exhibited.

Our Sponsors Deserve A Round of Applause

We want to thank our prize sponsors who have gone beyond what we had expected. Alien Skin has even donated funds to help us ship many of the international prizes that were donated by the good folks at Manfrotto Distribution and Kata Bags. Kata Bags has supplied us with additional prizes for the added Honorable Mention Winners.

We really didn’t give much thought to the problems in shipping the prizes when we started this contest. We later discovered that Manfrotto could not ship their products to international winners and then realized that there were international shipping restrictions on some of the prizes. The bags were considered oversized and would not be allowed to be mailed and then of course the weight issues and costs to mail the tripods internationally. Needless to say, through the generosity and support of our sponsors, we will overcome these small problems.

Visit Us Often & Join Us

Please revisit our site and watch for further information on the winners and find out a bit more about how they achieved their winning photos. We will be writing some behind the scene posts that I think you will find interesting. We will also begin work on our next contest and take the lessons learned from this one to make the next one even better.

We urge those that have not taken the time to visit the IPA web site to learn about the many benefits of membership to do so now. Also visit Alien Skin Software and read our Reviews of some of their latest products both here in our blog and on our web site. Of course we love the group at Manfrotto Distribution and Kata Bags who have helped us with prizes, judging and the publicity we received at the recent Photo Plus Show in New York, where they distributed thousands of Super cards promoting the contest.

A special thanks must also go to our judges, Jeff Foster AKA Pixel Painter and Will Holowka,Product Manager at Manfrotto who worked with me to select these winners from so many excellent entries. Thank you both for your help and hard work on this final selection.

Thank you all again for your entries, we have decided to take all of the 20 final entries and award all of them with prizes. Originally we expected to have a total of fourteen (14) winners, but have now expanded that to twenty (20), so that these top finalists will all receive the exposure and recognition we feel they deserve.