It’s been a month of hiatus for me and during that long pause in writing, I was thinking on what to share to all of you since I’m not doing any personal shoots or project. I was browsing my facebook account one day and an acquaintance in photography bagged another prestigious award. Mario Cardenas whom I personally met during our Sony DI Challenge last year was again dominating the world of international photography competitions (he also won our Sony DI challenge, Pro category).

 

 

I was chatting around with my photographer friend Elmer and while we were exchanging ideas, out of nowhere he asked me to check the website of HIPA. I immediately keyed-in their website and I got surprised that the website design was totally revamped and was given a complate facade-lift. To those who have seen the website before the old Arabic inspired template was replaced by a more minimalist approach, which I personally think fits their label of being international.

I found some cool changes in it, they now have a featured banner where a slideshow of previous selected photos can be seen, also they have a newly added menu "Photographers Directory" where I guess they will put the names of previous winners for easy reference, but it is still in working progress.

The great news aside from the newly constructed website is that, this prestigious competition  spearheaded by H.H. Sheikh Hamdan Bin Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum have opened its "Creating the Future" 2014 competition, just 3 days after p their 2013 "Beauty of Light" winner. Aspirants all over the world can submit entries as early as now and take their chance on winning the coveted grand prize of $120,000. 

photo taken from google image

HIPA has once again been kind enough to its participants as they lengthened the time frame for accepting entries, It started last 21st March 2013 and will end up accepting entries on the 31st December 2013. It will be a long 9 months of tedious filtering thousands of photographs from all over the world and a much bigger responsibility for the HIPA team to carefully pick the deserving winners.

So what are you guys waiting for? HIPA is calling all of you to register and join now for HIPA 2014.

Thanks for your time... 

Feel free to leave a comment if you like or not liked this post

Me,

                                                                

 The Hot Shoe Anthologist

Last night, the most anticipated, world's richest international photography contest had officially named the winners for the year 2013. The Hamdan International Photography Award ceremony was held at grounds of the Gate building at Dubai International Financial Center. 

The event was well attended and each of the registered attendees got to take home a souvenir from the ceremony which was a Fujifilm 210 Instax camera -- keeping the photography concept at bay, which I believe was really smart. The event was of course graced by it's patron His Highness Sheikh Hamdan Bin Mohhamed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum and other high ranking officials of the U.A.E.

So without further ado here are the winners for each category:

GENERAL

 Guangfei Ji from China

3rd International Winner in General Category 

Photo courtesy of HIPA.

Boris Zulj from Croatia

2nd International Winner in General Category

Photo courtesy of HIPA

Klaus-peter Selzer from Germany

1st International Winner in General Category

Photo courtesy of HIPA 

Mohamed AlSuwaidi from United Arab Emirates

3rd Emirati Winner in General Category

Mansoor AlMannai from United Arab Emirates 

2nd Emirati Winner in General Category

Photo courtesy of HIPA

Abdul Rab Sawad from United Arab Emirates

1st Emirati Winner in General Category

Photo courtesy of HIPA

EMIRATES CATEGORY

Adeeb Alani from Iraq 

3rd Winner in Emirates Category

Photo courtesy of HIPA

Michel Zoghzoghi from Lebanon

2nd winner in Emirates category

Photo courtesy of HIPA

Helmut Wachtarczyk from Germany

1st Winner in Emirates category

Photo courtesy of HIPA 

BLACK and WHITE CATEGORY

Le Duy Hoang from Vietnam

3rd Winner in Black & White Category

Photo courtesy of HIPA

Edwin Djuanda from Indonesia

2nd Winner in Black & White Category

Photo courtesy of HIPA

Chan Kwok Hung from Hong Kong

1st Winner in Black & White Category

Photo courtesy of HIPA

BEAUTY OF LIGHT

Xiaoping Ling from China

3rd International Winner in Beauty of Light Category

Photo courtesy of HIPA

Oscar Bjarnason from Iceland

2nd International Winner in Beauty of Light Category

Photo courtesy of HIPA

Jingsheng Nie from China

1st International Winner in Beauty of light Category

Photo courtesy of HIPA 

Alaaa AlMuttawa from United Arab Emirates

3rd Emirati Winner in Beauty of Light Category

Photo courtesy of HIPA

Omar AlZaabi from United Arab Emirates

2nd Emirati Winner in Beauty of Light Category

Photo courtesy of HIPA

Abdulaziz bin ali from United Arab Emirates

1st Emirati Winner in Beauty of Light Category

Photo courtesy of HIPA

 Osama Al ZUbaidi from United Arab Emirates

Grand Prize Winner of 2nd Season Beauty of Light 

Photo courtesy of HIPA

Congratulations to all the winners! It was a we'll deserved victory for all of you. This is another feather in the cap for the HIPA team--a job well done indeed. 

As the HIPA 2013 has finished, it is now time to anticipate for the HIPA 2014 with it's theme "Creating the Future". So,fellow photographers....time to get those thinking caps on! :)

To view the complete gallery of the winning photos, please visit HIPA's Facebook account HERE.

I you had missed the event here is the official video of the ceremony: HIPA Award Ceremony 2013

Thanks for your time... 

Feel free to leave a comment if you like or not liked this post

Me,

                                                                

 The Hot Shoe Anthologist

 

The thrill is almost over and 4 days from now a grand winner of the Hamdan International Photography Award (HIPA) is going to be declared and will take home a stash of $120,000. Even though only on their second year, HIPA has already propelled their rank as the leading international photography awards topping others for the biggest prize in a photo competition.

HIPA (Hamdan Bin Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum International Photography Award) one of the most prestigious photography competition in the world had recently conducted free photography workshops for photography enthusiast. The workshops lasted for 3 days and were facilitated by well re-known photographers like Martin Grahame-Dunn, Joseph Smith and Tom Ang. 

 

The Sony DI Challenge II is about to end as it is now on its last stage of the challenge. This will be my final push to be Sony’s amateur photographer winner (If I got lucky), we’ll never know until the final curtain falls at the awarding ceremony. So let us go back with the entry I made because this will be my final justification for this challenge. The 4^th challenge was all about capturing a candid scene, to elaborate it a little further I need to take photos of a human subject by not knowing I’m snapping them. As I was thinking of what to capture I always remember the phrase from a mentor couple of years ago that if you capture an image it should have some story to it.

Hey guys! I know I have been quiet the past few days and I need to share with you what was happening. Unfortunately I need to borrowed wifey’s laptop because I don’t have mine right now and had no time to write due to some workloads that needs to be finish. The last time I shared with you my thoughts on doing HDR (High Dynamic Range Images) which I can say I have been progressing from the previous research I have been doing. Some of you might be wondering why I have to the HDR thingy the hard way and there’s an option with the Sony Alpha A77 where they incorporated the feature, I just simply want to maximize the full potential of the camera and you’ll get the result out of your taste. I guess I’m doing pretty well at it and would still continue to polish things until I am satisfied. I will be updating my portfolio page with it as well.

 

It’s been a while since I posted, sorry guys I just got busy the past several days with some event and personal shoots. So you guys might be wondering what I have been doing lately? Want to guess? Nah I know it’s already up there on my headline (grin*). Most of you know that I have been doing glamour shoots, for models and promoters portfolio including individuals who like their own personal photos. These not necessarily mean I’m a one dimensional photographer and can only do glamour. So I dragged myself outside of my usual routine and tried out doing something different, this time around I’m not in the studio with a model, what I have is my Sony Alpha A77 (Thank you Sony) and a tripod ready to take a walk outside.

The first challenge was thrilling as expected, most of the competitors are campaigning their work at this early stage of the contest. This is the first time we saw each others works and it's like playing an online poker game, we don't know who has a better card in hand. Adding up a spice to the competition is by gathering a give me a pixel (votes) for our entries, the viewers has their chance to choose which of the entries they feel deserves to win. So having a good friend or a campaign manager will have an advantage with type of a scheme (Grin*).

I mentioned in my last post that during the last kick-off event, we were handed a booklet that contains the challenges that we are to do. There are basically four (4) challenges that we must do for the whole course of the program. The first challenge that was given to us was, to utilize the camera's 12 frames per second function to capture the motion of fast moving object in each frame. After achieving such photos, we will then merge the 12 frames into one single frame showing the flow of motion.

Being a finalist for the Sony DI challenge has its perks! First, you have the chance to use their flagship camera system for a month, second is your challenge output will be published and campaigned on their Facebook page (international exposure) and lastly winning the competition makes you an ambassador for Sony MEA (Middle East and Africa) until they conduct the 3rd Sony DI challenge.

Last year, Sony MEA (Middle East and Africa) came up with a challenge for aspiring photographers both in professional and amateur category to showcase their ability and creativity by using the latest photographic equipment of Sony. A selection was made to draw out the 10 best participants, 5 for each category among thousands of hopefuls which entered the challenge. The selected amateur participants will receive the NEX-7 while the Pros received the new Sony Alpha A77 to be used during the competition.