Cool winter photography: HIPA’s AED 235,000 competition winners

The winners of HIPA’s World’s Coolest Winter Photography Competition have been announced. There were more than 2,800 submissions from the 2,176 participants, who hailed from a total of 89 countries – mostly from the UAE (428) or India (424) with Iran contributing 118 and the Philippines 112.

Organised by HIPA (Hamdan Bin Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum International Photography Awards) in collaboration with the UAE Government Media Office, the competition ran with the World’s Coolest Winter promotional campaign for UAE tourism activities during the winter season. It ran for a month (20 December to 20 January 20) and invited submissions for the open-to-all One Photo category (where five subcategory winners each got AED 7,000) and a professionals-only Portfolio category (four subcategories, winners receiving a more professional AED 50,000 apiece).

The winners:

One Photo

  • Desert: Maurizio Casula (Italy)
  • Sea: Jason Balaba (Philippines)
  • Mountains: Abdalla Mohamed Alraeesi (UAE)
  • Wadi: Khaled Alkindi (UAE)
  • Emirates from Above: Ajay Ghosh Ramachandran (India)

Portfolio

  • UAE in Your Eyes: Omar Almarzouqi (UAE)
  • UAE Wildlife: Rahul Bansal (India)
  • Faces From UAE: Tittu Thomas (India)
  • UAE Street Life: Crisencio Bernabe (Philippines)

Submissions were assessed by a panel of genuinely storied judges including John Stanmeyer, recipient of numerous accolades and cofounder of VII Photo Agency; Canadian Photographer Barbara Davidson, three-time Pulitzer and Emmy Award winning photographer; and Shadi Nasri, a photographer (and Nikon School instructor) who specialises in fine art landscapes and space photography.


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