awards winners 2019 Nov 2019

Title: Duccio

"Il Sabbione Siena - a Rugby pitch well known as having the worst ground conditions in the whole of Europe. A rugby tournament for under 12s was taking place that day. It was raining heavily. Participating kids were having fun in the mud by scrambling and tackling each other. There was genuine energy there. Nobody cared about the rain or mud. They were purely enjoying the fight on the pitch.

I got carried away with the game and released the shutter. Suddenly a 10-year-old boy caught my attention. His ocean-blue eyes were standing out in the mud. The transparency and pureness in there were endless. Right after the game, I called him aside and asked if it was ok for me to snap a picture. He was a little bit embarrassed, but gently smiled and accepted my offer. This photo delivers the mixture of this 10-year-old boy's shyness and a certain strength as a real warrior."

Title: Weyes Blood Album Cover

"This image was created for the album cover of Weyes Blood's 2019 album 'Titanic Rising'. The artist wanted to convey the idea of an 80s bedroom that has sunk into the sea, and also loved the grainy look of the film.

We built the set at my underwater studio in Los Angeles, California, and sunk it. We had to dress the set as well, so loads of clothing, books, records, and cassettes were dropped in the water - it looked just like a teenage girl's bedroom!"

Title: Teahouse

"The winning image is a Teahouse by Kengo Kuma, specially designed for Westbank in Vancouver and positioned on a terrace of a high-rise in the very centre of the city. This made it quite challenging, as this is a very unusual place for such a building.

The teahouse has glass all the way around and we had to drape a theatre blackout curtain to wrap around the building from a few floors above so we didn’t get any reflections. I requested the tea master to come and perform a tea ceremony so I knew exactly where to position people so as not to be against the traditions."

Title: Nyabel

"The image was shot in my apartment living room on a background that one of my artist friends made for me. The light I used was a really large soft umbrella camera left and a large scrim reflector camera right. With portraits like this, I like to shoot @ F11 to F13.

This image is a part of a four image series that revolved around the idea of royalty, class, and elegance."

Title: The Supra is back!

"I got commissioned by Toyota Motor Europe to shoot this race car prototype announcing the return on the market of the iconic Toyota Supra. This project was strictly confidential until the reveal of the car at the 2018 Geneva Motorshow. This meant, for security reasons, the car wasn't allowed outside the manufacturer's photo studio. But the client wanted the car on a race track...

My in-house production company scouted a couple of potential tracks in the south of Spain. We selected the Guadix track because of its very clean environment and beautiful views on the Sierra Nevada mountains. I shot backplates with a stand-in car. After that, I shot the prototype in the studio reproducing light and perspective. The process is pretty technical.

The winning photo was an added shot I did on top of the client's shooting list.  It's my own vision of this concept. Being a former amateur race car driver helped quite obviously for motion and angles."

Title: Welders working inside a freight train car

"This particular image was inside of a freight car being built in a small town in Texas. The freight car is actually on a rack that rolls the car as the worker's weld the inside. I started by positioning the three workers where I thought we wanted them in order to create a nice composition. Then we proceeded to light the car on the inside. We utilized two Profoto D-1 lights as well as two existing work lights that the facility uses for their workers.

Since we have a lot of experience working with welders like this, we did several things to reduce the brightness of the welding wands.  Usually, at full intensity weld settings, the welders would be completely blown out, but we have learned over the years a variety of ways to reduce this intensity and therefore reduce the contrast of the image into a manageable dynamic range. Reducing the dynamic range is imperative in order to create an image that is well balanced in exposure."

Title: Caleo Paper SS19

"The image was created when Caleo Magazine asked me to shoot their next cover story. I saw it as the perfect opportunity to create a bold, minimalistic series in celebration of the Bauhaus school and movement turning 100 years old this year.

I kept the setup basic, and rather focused on building a great connection with the model. Natural light, my faithful Nikon, and the right angles did the trick. And a great team behind the camera, of course."

Title: Let me take you dancing

"These days we all talk about sustainable food. But we mostly act like we’re still in the lavish 80s. The sky is the limit and we don’t have to change anything.

My image/series 'Let me take you dancing' is a nice meaningful wink to this topic."

Title: Travel light

"This past summer, we went on a family holiday on a beautiful road trip all through Argentinian Patagonia, and as in my beginnings, I decided to have the camera on me at all times for a personal project on both my kids growing up.

In the picture, Simona, my oldest was 14 years old, and she is wearing her adolescence quite wildly, her mind concerned about many things. Fortunately, kids have this consciousness these days, like climate change, anxieties, veganism, and while I turned to her as we were talking, she looked at me so strongly and determined - plus the t-shirt she had on at that moment - and it was perfect. 'Delete the Drama'."

Title: The Hubbuck

"I created the image in September 2018. After a chance encounter with Gavin Hubbuck at a petrol station in the seaside town I live. I’d been thinking about a shot with a family in a vintage car having a day out at the beach for a while. But searching for cars to hire, I really couldn’t find anything authentic that fitted in with my idea. Then one day as I pulled up to the local petrol station, I couldn’t believe my eyes through the gap in the petrol pumps. The turquoise ford Cortina was glowing in the afternoon sunshine. Complete with rally headlights and furry dice hanging from the mirror. It was like winning the lottery from a visual point of view. I waited for the owner to return to the car to ask if I could use it for a shot. I told him my idea but at the time planned to stage something with a family and my idea included a red-haired girl. He told me he had a family with kids and his daughter had red hair. He went on to tell me about his love of vintage items, his inflatables, chopper bike and 1970’s caravan, and his days out at the beach. So from there, the whole idea fell into place.

We exchanged numbers and went on to arrange me joining them for a day at the beach. It really was that simple.

I think the success and power of the picture comes from its purity. And let’s face it: it’s a happy image. Who doesn’t want to look at a happy picture in a world led by social media, depression and anxiety? These people are humble and there’s intent from both myself and the family to portray the best version of them."

Title: Chin Village

"I travelled through Southeast Asia and I fell in love with Myanmar. I wanted to know more about the culture, history, and people. I researched some traditional cultures and discovered the tattoed faced women from Chin Village.

I was already in Thailand and decided to go back to Myanmar. I had to travel for two days to get there, taking two flights and two boats to find them. The tattoed face is a tradition that was interrupted 60 years ago. I portrayed some of these ladies and among them, there were three sisters; two of them have tattooed faces and the third doesn’t. This sister was three years old when the tradition was banned. These are some of the last women with the tattooed face of Chin Village."

Title: The Shape of an Icon

"This is a photograph of red paint poured into water and shaped into the silhouette of the iconic Heinz ketchup bottle, with labels and cap added to complete the effect. The image was created in a series of lessons for my photography student, Ian Bianco. The first lesson involved shooting red acrylic paint being poured into a fish tank of water which required a fast studio flash and careful timing to capture the pour at the best moment.

The second lesson was shooting the classic Heinz glass ketchup bottle for it's labels, cap and overall shape. The third lesson was compositing the elements together in Photoshop, which involved stripping out the labels and cap using the pen tool, creating a guide outline of the bottle shape also using the pen tool, and then finally pushing the pixels of the best paint pour to fit within the boundaries of the outline guide using the liquify tool. I left the lower sides and bottom of the pour in its naturally captured state to add an organic randomness to the overall image."

Title: We won't die sleeping

"A nomadic family in a pickup truck at Khovsgol Lake in Northern Mongolia. They make a living by selling chunks of ice to nomads with no water nearby. Every day they come to the lake to chop ice out of the frozen lake and bring it to the countryside."