The winners of the World Landscape Photographer competition and their equipment | Articles | Photo, video, optics

Source: worldlandscapephotographer.com

The win­ners of the first World Land­scape Pho­tog­ra­ph­er com­pe­ti­tion have been announced. The World Land­scape Pho­tog­ra­ph­er com­pe­ti­tion is the brain­child of pro­fes­sion­al land­scape pho­tog­ra­ph­er Nigel Dan­son. He decid­ed to help peo­ple affect­ed by the COVID-19 epi­dem­ic, and while look­ing through his own cat­a­log, he came up with the con­cept of the com­pe­ti­tion. The idea is sim­ple — par­tic­i­pants could share the top five land­scape pho­tos tak­en before March 1, 2020 by pay­ing an entry fee of £10.

“At least 90%” of dona­tions will go to COVID-19 relat­ed char­i­ties, with the remain­ing 10% going to “fees and expens­es asso­ci­at­ed with send­ing prizes to win­ners,” Dan­son said.

Accord­ing to the orga­niz­er, he “did not expect more than 1,000 peo­ple to enter the com­pe­ti­tion,” how­ev­er, he and six oth­er judges con­sid­ered 4,838 entries from more than 1,000 par­tic­i­pants. As a result, the main win­ner, six more prize-win­ners and 50 rec­om­mend­ed pho­tos were select­ed.

First prize in the first World Land­scape Pho­tog­ra­phy com­pe­ti­tion went to Neil Bur­nell from Eng­land with his “stun­ning mys­ti­cal pho­to­graph of Wist­man For­est in Devon”. As a prize for first place, Bur­nell received a Nikon Z50 cam­era and two lens­es pro­vid­ed by Nikon itself. The remain­ing six win­ners were award­ed oth­er prod­ucts from Ben­ro, Foto­speed, Kase and Ten­ba.

Over­all, more than £10,000 has been donat­ed to UNICEF, which is “rais­ing mon­ey to help chil­dren affect­ed by the out­break. [COVID-19]by cam­paign­ing to pro­mote a cul­ture of hand­wash­ing, as well as pro­vid­ing essen­tial med­ical sup­plies such as sur­gi­cal gloves, soap and clean water.”

The gallery below shows the work of the win­ner and six oth­er final­ists, as well as the equip­ment (cam­eras and lens­es) with which they were filmed. All 50 rec­om­mend­ed pho­tos and com­ments from each of the judges are avail­able on the World Land­scape Pho­tog­ra­ph­er web­site.

Source: dpreview.com

1st place — “Wise” (“Wise”), author: Neil Bur­nell.

Equip­ment and set­tings:

About the pho­to: “I have been film­ing Wist­man For­est for four years now and have been think­ing about the com­po­si­tion of this shot for some time. The shot required extreme­ly dense fog to sin­gle out the cen­tral trees in this high­ly com­pressed and inter­twined area of ​​the for­est. After sev­er­al unsuc­cess­ful shots, I final­ly got lucky this Jan­u­ary, when the fog per­sist­ed all day. I must say that this is prob­a­bly my favorite shot in this beau­ti­ful for­est.”

Source: dpreview.com

2nd place — “The Copse” (“Grove”) by Jason Hud­son.

Equip­ment and set­tings:

• Fuji­film XT1 cam­era (con­vert­ed to infrared);
• XF 10–24mm f/4 lens;
• 24mm, f/8, 1/125sec, ISO 200.

About the pho­to: “When I lived in Eden Val­ley, all I had to do to find out if it was fog­gy today was look out the win­dow. So it was this morn­ing. A thick fog hung over the val­ley. While my Sony A7 was being repaired, all I had left was a small Sony com­pact and a Fuji­film XT1 con­vert­ed for infrared pho­tog­ra­phy.

I wait­ed for the sun to rise over the Pen­nines for the mag­ic to hap­pen. For a glo­ri­ous 20 min­utes I ran through the local woods to Eden­hall. I took some pret­ty pic­tures, but then as I was walk­ing down the road, I saw this grove of trees pok­ing out of the mist. They looked majes­tic with blue skies above them.

I knew shoot­ing in infrared would look good. As soon as I looked through the viewfind­er, I saw the poten­tial of this shot. And I took this pho­to by hand. The image required very lit­tle pro­cess­ing oth­er than an infrared pre­set in Sil­ver Efex which I used and a bit of Gauss­ian blur to soft­en it up.”

Source: dpreview.com

3rd place — “Spe­cial” (“Spe­cial”) author: Andrew Baruf­fi.

Equip­ment and set­tings:

About pho­tog­ra­phy: “I’ve only been doing pho­tog­ra­phy for a cou­ple of years. At the time, I assumed that sub­jects, com­po­si­tion, and shoot­ing con­di­tions out­weighed the impor­tance of light. In some cas­es it still is for me, but even just a lit­tle bit of light can make a scene real­ly spe­cial. This image spans two days. In areas of east­ern Zion [национальный парк в США] dur­ing the win­ter months, chunks of ice can be found sand­wiched between boul­ders. These chunks are grad­u­al­ly erod­ed as more water and ice seeps into the sand or sim­ply melts and evap­o­rates on hot­ter days. I arrived at part of the main bay on a cold day, where there was a more sparse-look­ing bend in the back­wa­ter. The back­wa­ter was quite icy, and chunks of ice were del­i­cate­ly adorned with fall­en leaves here and there. One in par­tic­u­lar caught my atten­tion — a gold­en oak leaf curled up from the cen­ter, while the tip and stem were frozen into the ice. I sat by this back­wa­ter for sev­er­al hours, try­ing to find the best com­po­si­tion, and in the end I found what I want­ed. It was such a beau­ti­ful scene, I had to make sure I got it right before every­thing dis­ap­peared.

The next day it was even cold­er when I arrived. I returned to the same com­po­si­tion to see how it had changed overnight. Because of the frosts, the ice had tak­en on a more uni­form pat­tern, and the oak leaf was still frozen in the same place. Even more spe­cial was the morn­ing light stream­ing into the scene. The gold­en light reflect­ed from the sand­stone oppo­site me kissed the sur­face of the oak leaf, and made me aware of what I was miss­ing. It was­n’t com­po­si­tion, shoot­ing con­di­tions, pat­terns or objects, just some light.”

Source: dpreview.com

4th place — “Fleet­ing Day­dream” (“Fleet­ing Fan­ta­sy”), by Tod Col­bert.

Equip­ment and set­tings:

About the pho­to: “I took this shot at Low­er Yosemite Falls in Yosemite Nation­al Park this Feb­ru­ary. It was tak­en ear­ly in the morn­ing and the Sun’s posi­tion cre­at­ed the rain­bow for only a minute or so. Many pic­tures were tak­en while I wait­ed for the sun­light to pass through the falls. It was mag­i­cal.”

Source: dpreview.com

5th place — “Rolling Fog” (“Slid­ing Fog”), by Adri­an Har­ri­son.

Equip­ment and set­tings:

• cam­era Nikon D610;
• 20mm f/1.8 lens;
• 20mm, f/13, 69sec, ISO 50.

About the pho­to: “When you live half an hour from But­ter­mere Lake in the Lake Dis­trict, you can say that you are quite famil­iar with the area. I can’t count how many times I’ve spent the morn­ing try­ing to get a shot that’s a lit­tle dif­fer­ent from what you usu­al­ly see from here. For­tu­nate­ly for me, this time the con­di­tions were just amaz­ing. Mist flow­ing through the scene, absolute­ly calm water and no breath of wind. All I could hear was the sound of grav­el under my feet. I took a few shots, but then decid­ed to try a slow shut­ter speed so the view­er could see the mist gen­tly mov­ing over the hills behind the famous But­ter­mere pines. A morn­ing that I will remem­ber.

Source: dpreview.com

6th place — “Kunkovice´s Green” (“Kunkovice green­ery”), author: Radoslav Cer­nicky.

Equip­ment and set­tings:

• cam­era Nikon 7200;
• lens 70–300mm;
• 260mm, f/11, 1/160sec, ISO 100.

About the pho­to: “The pho­to was tak­en in spring at gold­en hour with a tele­pho­to lens. In South Moravia in the Czech Repub­lic near the vil­lage of Kunkovice. This area is also known as Mora­vian Tus­cany.”

Source: dpreview.com

7th place — “Fall Impres­sions” (“Autumn impres­sions”), by Jason Flen­niken.

Equip­ment and set­tings:

• cam­era Sony A7R IV;
• 70–200mm f/4 lens;
• 84mm, f/11, 1/20sec, ISO 200.

About the pho­to: “This pho­to was tak­en dur­ing my first trip to Acaidia Nation­al Park in Octo­ber 2019. It was the first time I saw autumn col­ors in the north­east and I was blown away. This place is Tarn, right on the side of the road. The pho­to was tak­en in the mid­dle of the morn­ing. For about 30 min­utes you get beau­ti­ful reflec­tions of the col­ors of the hill in the water.

This area was full of small com­po­si­tions, and I was lucky that the clouds cre­at­ed a dap­pled light. It took a bit of pro­cess­ing, as is the case with most shots at this time of year in Aca­dia, as the col­ors come out too sat­u­rat­ed right out of the cam­era. I shot at 70–200 f/4 and the Sony A7R4, which allowed me to crop the frame so as to real­ly nar­row the shapes in the pho­to.”

* when prepar­ing the arti­cle, mate­ri­als from the resources dpreview.com and worldlandscapephotographer.com were used