Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2013

The results are now out for the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2013 competition and can be viewed at:

Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2013

No winners from Thailand! I think the last Thai based winner/commended was Alex Wu a few years back for an underwater shot. Click here . There was Melisa Lee's photo last year but that was an editorial shot of the tiger temple. Anyone know any others?

The Grand prize winner is not really my cup of tea, but to each his own. My fav is Douglas Seifert,s "The pull of a dugong" - powerful image, makes you think.

Thanks for posting the link.

Steve Winter had two pictures made at Huai Kha Khaeng last year (2012) in his winning series, A Tiger's Tale, in the Wildlife Photojournalist award.
But it's not common to see images of the wildlife of Thailand or neighbouring countries. I guess it's our duty to change that ;).
I've seen some great work by Thai photographers, but I guess they might not join the competition.

Personally I like the winning picture, it's something different.
The Runner-up in Mammal Behaviour: Bad boys, Andrew Walmsley made me laugh.

I forgot about Steve Winter, as a camera trapper I am not sure how I did that! Age.

I also like Richard Packwood's "The Greeting" from the black and white section.

This years contest has stirred up quite a bit of internet chat about certain issues in the winner choices as well. The insect crowd have been bemoaning no insect shots making it through this year. There's been some comments about some species/styles continually being awarded - example was a crocodile/alligator head shot 3 years in a row.

I can only keep on wishing for the luck to be somewhere at the right time and to press the shutter at the right time. The lords of luck will have to be kind to me to come up with anything near what these togs have done.

There is enough to argue about, haha. I definitely see pictures in the gallery that show little originality in my opinion. It might be technically good, but in a competition like this I expect a bit more than just that. But I know that in many cases they take into account how impossible it might be to get anything artistically more exciting. And I haven't been able to create anything better myself ;), so what can I say...

A couple of years back I managed to reach the final round with a portfolio of 10 pictures for the Eric Hosking award (for photographers of up to 26 years old) with 5 images made in Thailand and the other half from Madagascar. Sadly did not win, there was no other winner for the award that year (2009). I'm not completely sure if it had to do with some problem with my TIFF files, they did sent me an email that my tiff files were different from the jpg's. Not sure if I screwed it up with wrong color profiles or something. I did a poor job saving the files in all different formats when entering the competition, as I had entered it while traveling in Kenya, and not having my own notebook or pc with me. Or perhaps they decided in the final round that the images were not good enough. A missed opportunity, though being the first time I had ever entered a photo competition, I was very happy getting that far in such a prestigious competition. If I look back I think my images were not very exciting artistically, so I maybe did not deserve to win. And therefore I haven't entered the last few years, as I don't have any shots that I think would make any chance. But hopefully one day everything will fall in its place when I release the shutter.

..........." I managed to reach the final round with a portfolio of 10 pictures for the Eric Hosking award"

Wow, impressive! I entered once with what I thought were my best shots (ever). Did not even get to the second viewing. Tail between legs.