THE WORLD’S BEST PHOTOGRAPHS International Loupe Awards 2013

Melbourne, Australia - Now in its fifth year, the International Loupe Awards 2014 has ridden a wild wave of debate and controversy, with heated discourse over the subjectivity of competition judging and category definitions raging right up to the announcement of the overall Open & Amateur Award Winners on Friday 20th December: Mark Carter from New Zealand (Open Award) and Lori Cicchini from Australia (Amateur Award).

Notably, in a competition that featured 22 judges from 11 different countries – assessing 4,468 photographs from 1,060 different entrants from 78 countries – the domination of Australian photographers saw some people up in arms. Yet, Loupe Awards rules stipulate no judge can judge images from their own country, which means Australia’s victory has been a legitimate one and a ringing endorsement for the Australian photographic industry.

“As we’ve come to expect, running a photographic competition of this stature and scale is challenging, exciting and rewarding,” states Competition Director, Nathan Oxley. “With every successive year, the quality of the work from international photographers rises, which means boundaries are pushed in every direction. This year had its own unique challenges, and it wasn’t easy for the judges to come up with winners, but soon two came to the fore as the best overall images of the year.”

A New Zealand advertising photographer with a passion for landscape and underwater work, Mark Carter received a belated birthday gift (by one day) when Competition Director Nathan Oxley phoned to notify him of his Open Award win.

"I shot this image recently for a Mountain Dew campaign in New Zealand,” he says. “It was a huge job pulling this together, and we shot thousands of frames on the day using our hero talent and body doubles. The concept was great but really technical to pull off. It was a fantastic campaign to work on, and I couldn't be happier with the final image.”

For Australian-based Lori Cicchini, taking out the Amateur Award was a resounding note on which to conclude her photographic studies:

“I shot this image as part of my final year assignment as a photography student where I’m majoring in Fashion and Portraiture,” she says. “The image was inspired by the TV series Game of Thrones, and the idea behind creating an image like this was to push my postproduction skills to a higher level. I knew it was something special as soon as it was finished.”

Mark Carter receives a prize pool that includes US$15,000 in cash and a VIP trip to the 2014 Creative Asia Imaging Expo in Hong Kong, while Lori Cicchini receives photographic equipment from the likes of Canson, Kayell, Elinchrom, Drobo, Datacolor, Orbis and IOShutter.

Entries for International Loupe Awards 2014 will open in October 2014. www.loupeawards.com

About International Loupe Awards
The International Loupe Awards (formerly known as the International Aperture Awards) was established in 2008 with a mission beyond that of most photographic competitions: To deliver opportunities that ensure wider exposure for photographers and allow them to gauge the perception of their work on the world stage.

About Nathan Oxley – Competition Director
Nathan Oxley and his company IC12 conceived the International Loupe Awards in their own vision after developing a successful competition judging system for the Australian Institute of Professional Photography (AIPP). He also co-developed the Creative Asia Awards and Conference in 2011, specifically focused on the promotion and support of photography in the Asia-Pacific region. Nathan and his company IC12 recently created the LED Light Cube (ledlightcube.com) in response to the needs of photographers. The Cube was successfully crowdfunded on Indiegogo.com raising US$132,000, and is currently in production. Nathan is an avid photographer himself. Twitter @NathanOxleyCA

About Peter Eastway – Head Judge
(G. M. Photog., Hon. FAIPP, Hon. FNZIPP, FAIPP ) Peter Eastway is an Australian professional photographer who works in landscape, travel, portrait and advertising. He is also the publisher of Better Photography magazine (betterphotography.com) and co-publisher of Better Digital Camera and Better Photoshop Techniques magazine. He has won the AIPP Australian Professional Photographer of the Year Award twice, as well as many other national and international awards.

About William Long – Head Judge
(M. Photog IV, MNZIPP, FBIPP, FRPS ) Australian photographer, speaker and educator, William Long is regarded as one of Australia’s most awarded photographers. Receiving numerous major photographic prizes and honours both nationally and internationally – including his recent Quadruple Gold Bar: AIPP Master of Photography, his highly esteemed Queensland Professional Photographer of the Year and British Portrait Photographer of the Year – William was equally delighted when he received recognition for his excellence in photography with a Fellowship by the British Institute of Professional Photography (BIPP) and then again with his Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society (RPS).

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Hasselblad set to launch world’s first medium format CMOS sensor camera

Hasselblad is set to launch the world's first 50MP medium format camera using CMOS sensor technology. The groundbreaking H5D-50c will go on sale in March.

Ove Bengtson, Hasselblad Product Manager said: "This pioneering 50 megapixel CMOS sensor camera is based on our H5D-50 model but will offer a faster capture rate; longer shutter speed capability and much greater ISO performance. It will provide greatly improved Live Video in Phocus and will also be available with Multi-Shot functionality."

He added: "We believe this will provide a highly compelling option for professional photographers who prefer a more versatile camera that enables them to immediately embrace a wider range of photo-disciplines but still encapsulating the exceptionally high-end image quality associated with Hasselblad."

Hasselblad's new CEO Ian Rawcliffe said: "We are extremely excited about this highly adaptable new camera which will offer an even broader palette of shooting options for our high-end customers.

"This is a world-first and underpins Hasselblad's status at the forefront of camera technology. It will be the first of a number of medium format capture innovations we have planned for the coming months."

Further information and prices for the new H5D-50c models will be announced in March.

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In Control of Colour

Master photographer Bernhard Edmaier takes to the skies to achieve fantastic visions of the Earth from an aerial vantage point, and his work features in the latest issue of VICTOR and also in his amazing new book.

The great photographers have the vision to extract the essential elements of a scene and to reduce it to its crucial components. The fact that German aerial genius Bernhard Edmaier can achieve this feat from a vantage point high in the sky is all the more remarkable, and his exquisite work, achieved using Hasselblad cameras, is featured in the current issue of VICTOR Magazine and has just been showcased in his latest book, 'EarthArt - Colours of the Earth.'

As the name suggests, Bernhard has been in the skies actively looking for scenes that demonstrate the rich diversity of the planet's natural colours, such as the blue colour of
water and ice, the variegated greens of vegetation, the many shades of yellow, orange, red and brown of rocks and desert sand, the white and grey of glaciers and the surprising colour spectrum of volcanoes.

Edmaier worked over a period of 10 years across all continents except the Antarctic to shoot the images for "Colours of the Earth". The shots for the VICTOR profile were gathered towards the end of 2012 when Bernhard took a four-week flight expedition to the Chilean Andes. One of the most colour-rich regions in the world, the area is bordered by the Atacama Desert in the north and the Patagonian ice fields in the south and hosts more than 120 active volcanoes.

To achieve his striking vistas Bernhard needs to shoot from a high altitude, working from a helicopter or small plane, carefully directing his pilot until the envisaged scene has been acquired. Ultimate quality has always been fundamental to his work, hence the need for a Hasselblad: having started out with analogue, Bernhard switched to the H System in 2007 and now works an H5D-60. Although he's working with digital files, however, nothing is ever changed or enhanced in postproduction, so those remarkable colours you see are exactly as the photographer saw them.

"EarthArt - Colours of the Earth" can be ordered online at Amazon.
www.bernhard-edmaier.de

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More Power to Pictures in VICTOR

The eagerly awaited Edition Three of Hasselblad's much lauded VICTOR Photography Book is available this week and the accent is now even more firmly on the outstanding images that are being showcased.

Following its relaunch back in September 2012, Hasselblad's book format publication VICTOR has gained plaudits from every quarter, due to its supremely high production values and the quality of the photographers who have been included. Issue Two continued the good work and further established the look, and now Issue Three is again going to be something special.

While the format remains the same this time round the mix of text and images has changed a little, with even more emphasis now being placed on the visuals and the scale at which pictures have been used. Otherwise the values that have quickly established VICTOR as a 'must buy' publication remain: exquisitely printed and hard bound, it's more of a luxury book than a magazine, and the words, as before, are translated into a variety of languages, and so it's accessible to everyone.

As with the previous two editions the line-up of photographers being featured is awesome: David Lynch, Matthias Koslik, Andy Rudak, Bernhard Edmaier, Alisha Goldstein, Laurent Segretier, Timothy Hogan, Derek Kendall, Klaus Thymann, John Robert Rowland, Morgan Fisher and Brad Harris. "We're delighted to have pulled together such a celebrated line up of names," says Paul Waterworth, Hasselblad's Global Photographer Relations Manager. "It's a tribute to how well respected the publication is that so many great photographers are prepared to contribute."

While the overall look and feel of the publication is the same, and the price remains at a hugely competitive €20/GBP15/US$25 plus shipping costs, there has been a change in the way the magazine is distributed. Customers can still order VICTOR online at www.newsstand.co.uk to be shipped all over the world, but now all Hasselblad subsidiaries (UK, Germany, US, France and Japan) are also offering to supply the magazine directly.

More news and information about VICTOR magazine can be found online at
www.victorbyhasselblad.com and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/VICTORbyHasselblad

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