Photography 2021/22

March 18, 2022 6:49 PM

Winners of the 2021 International Landscape Photographer of the Year Contest. Winners of 2021 World Nature Photography Awards. Winners of Sony World Photography Awards for 2022.
posted by blue shadows (4 comments total)

Is there a name for that thing where your jaw drops and then keeps dropping? Landscapes, man. If I just happened upon one of these I would assume it was fake. Though, are they allowed to tweak the color? Might be some color tweaking happening.
posted by Glinn at 8:38 PM on March 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

definitely some post-processing drama in these pix
posted by kokaku at 5:35 AM on March 19, 2022 [3 favorites]

Some truly appalling glurge in the first link. I guess with the right equipment and liberal-enough Lightroom use, even the most arresting landscape or natural phenomenon can be reduced to the stuff of 90s corporate-motivational posters.

After that mess, the vulture pecking out the wildebeest's eye in Link 2 (whose judges kept the cornball sentimentality and visual clichés within a survivable range, by and large) was a welcome palate cleanser.
posted by wreckingball at 7:29 AM on March 19, 2022

Definitely way more than just color tweaking. Spend some time staring at "Story of Ages", the photo of a moonlit tree by the winner Aytek Cetin, and you'll see a few spots where the shading just doesn't make sense with respect to the light source angle. It's more of a painting than a photo. Some of the past winners of that contest have been really great so I'm disappointed the judges would pick such an unconvincing entry.

At this rate next year's winner will be one of those cheesy composite landscapes you see on Instagram with the impossibly large full moon.
posted by ilikemefi at 9:58 PM on March 19, 2022