Greetings fellow NPN members!
I wanted to share with you a project I have been involved in since January in the hopes of really just spreading the word. I already checked with David and he’s cool with this thread! =) Let’s discuss the newly created Natural Landscape Photography Awards.
As some photographers may have noticed, many of the existing competitions available to landscape and nature photographers, and perhaps the most prestigious ones, allow for any and all editing of the photograph - to the point that many winning images no longer resemble places or experiences you could reasonably photograph (which may or may not be something you personally care about). An emphasis on digital artistic creation has been rewarded extensively in most of the existing competitions, which has nearly excluded more traditional “eyewitness” landscape and nature photography from the spotlight.
Me and three other photographers - Alex Nail, Tim Parkin, and Rajesh Jyothiswaran - wanted to change this. We wanted to create a competition that not only celebrated and rewarded a more traditional approach to landscape and nature photography - but also encouraged artists to stick to this approach in their image making.
Certainly, no competition is perfect! We spent many hours in vigorous debate regarding our rules and we still have left a lot of the interpretation up to our excellent judging panel, and we recognize that it might not be for everyone. We also want to emphasize that the competition is not meant to be a value statement on styles of photography or digital manipulation of photography, rather - we simply want a platform by which a more traditional style is represented and celebrated.
In our opinion, one of photography’s unique features is its ability to clearly represent the visual experience of the world. The deep connection between the photograph and the scene it conveys has shown the world the beauty of nature, helped convince politicians to create our national parks, shown people their effect on natural habitats and broadened the horizons of nearly every human on earth. There are few who have not marveled at a National Geographic feature about some far-flung habitat or browsed a Sierra Club or National Trust book and had revealed to them their own treasured landscapes.
Historically, there have also been many celebrated artists who have used the camera to create works that diverge from representation in ways that no longer portray the landscape but interpret it. The Pictorialists used all the tools they had available to show just what photography was capable of as an art form.
But we now live in a world where there are blurred lines between these two aspects of photographic art. Our social media feeds show both approaches side by side with little to differentiate them. This current status quo is somewhat inevitable and understandable. However, when competitions do not make any distinction between the two, we are faced with a conundrum; Photographers who try to work within the boundaries of the landscape they actually experienced find it difficult to compete with photographs that depart from these constraints. The competitions we see online sometimes reward the technical skills of post-processing, compositing and graphic design over the challenges of working within the limits of the real world. How rarely can a portrayal of a real scene compete with the deluge of extraordinary juxtapositions of perfected moments?
We want to create a place where the field skills of the photographer are celebrated, where the post-processing and interpretation of images respect the inherent truth of the scene experienced, and photography aware viewers would not feel deceived by the end result if they were to see that original scene themselves.
Not only are we rewarding the winners with money and prizes, we aim to create and publish a high quality fine art book that showcases the artwork that the community has created in this style. We are very close to this funding goal already, having received submissions from over 300 people in the two weeks we have been open.
Submissions are now open and you can enter any time between now and August 31.
We look forward to seeing your entries!
P.S. - the logo was hand-drawn by Alex Nail - pretty impressive, in my opinion! =)
