“SIX CONTINENTS” – Announcing the winners
We’re delighted to present the results of Life Framer edition II’s third theme. We embarked on a journey to expand our horizons and discover people, cultures and landscapes. Humans, nature, the ordinary, the magical. We pointed the compass, but it was your call to go in any direction you wanted: your adventures, your discoveries and your journeys. The photography competition was judged by Stefano de Luigi.
Stefano de Luigi is a documentary photographer and member of the prestigious VII Photo Agency. He is a three-time winner of the World Press Photo Award and is a regular contributor to many international magazines such as GEO, Stern, Time, The New Yorker and Le Monde. We caught up with Stefano and asked him what he is looking for in an outstanding photo. His response? “I’m interested in seeing through the photo to find the story, the idea, the vision”. He added some short and sharp advice to emerging photographers too: “Be curious in searching for stories. Be accurate in documenting them.” We couldn’t agree more…photography’s an art and a science!
As part of the judging process Stefano picked the winners and commented on his choices. That way we can all have some valuable feedback and meaningful insights into the mind of one today’s best contemporary photojournalists.
You can discover the winning and shortlisted images below and join the discussion on Facebook and Twitter. Congratulation to all the talented photographers featured and thank you all for your support – so much diversity! We may have mapped the continents of the planet but it doesn’t mean that there’s nothing left to explore on Earth… Onwards!
Winner: James Morgan
“This image is quite simple, at least in its composition, but when I first saw it I jumped out of my chair. I absolutely love the idea that somebody was behind the camera shooting this moment of joy. I ask photographs to surprise me, I ask them to enlarge my vision, make me curious about the stories behind them, I ask them to make me wonder again and again. This picture does all of that. I love this picture and I think it deserves to be the winner because it’s like an open window into an unknown world.
I think it matches very well with the title of the theme (as do the other two I have selected) because the photographer has chosen another point of view, an unusual one. I can look at this image for hours and always find something that surprises me.” – Stefano de Luigi
“I am very curious about this picture, as the place is undefined. Throughout my career I’ve seen many, many mosques, and I’ve seen many faithful people pray but I’ve never seen anything strange like this. I love how this picture is framed, which undoubtedly the photographer did on propose to cut all elements which could define a precise place, a precise time. [He] has just left this beautiful background which allow us to make a jump into another dimension, into another time. I love the surreal superposition of the two elements – the man praying in one world, and a separate world (that he’s praying for?) behind.” – Stefano de Luigi
“I have chosen this picture because I like its simplicity. That is sometimes the power of photography – few elements, which together evoke a strong feeling. This picture transports me to another plane. Suddenly I am not watching the little boy anymore, but instead am thinking about the meaning behind it all. Who is this little boy? What is he looking at? His future?
For me this image has a tremendous power of the iconic image. This little boy is probably looking at the sun but we don’t know exactly because there is only him, his pair of glasses and a beautiful sky behind. I love a picture where not all is told at first glance. I love even more those pictures that describe feelings rather than facts or even better – both!). But the best images of all evoke rather than describe. This is an excellent example.” – Stefano de Luigi
Shortlisted photographers: Turi Calafato, Joris Hermans, Larry Hallegua, Daniel Van Moll, Leslie Hall Brown, Daniel Ali, Bryan Stokely, Emily Grunfeld, Nino Vrana, Joao Pedro Machado, Kris Arzadun, Andrea Carboni, Sergio Carbajo, Eugenio Grosso, Julia Gunther, Sebastian Gil Miranda, Hanah Amber Young
Feedback and comments
Constructive comments are provided so that photographers who submitted their work can learn to curate their best work and so we can all discover a bit more about photography. This month’s valuable feedback is provided by our guest critic Katherine Oktober Matthews: an American artist working in Amsterdam as a photo editor for GUP magazine; one of the most established magazines in the field of international photography.
(private area only visible by entrants and Life Framer’s members)
