Maestro Photo Contest 2013-2014
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click on a picture to view all photosWinners Maestro Photo Contest 2012-2013
1st place: Rob Van Thienen, Belgium
Rob Van Thienen was born in 1964 and works as an operator at a chemical company. Rob’s first step in photography was, at a young age, to fully disassemble a working camera, and to realize afterwards that it would never work again. He bought his first camera at the age of 19. Rob never took photography classes, but being born in a family of artists he was naturally interested in images.
His favourite subjects are sports and action. Rob mentions the high-speed images in National Geographic as a source of inspiration. In his own images he seeks to attain a similar mood. ‘If people take more time to look at your photo than normal, you know you have done a good job,’ Rob says. The winning images were shot at the dog-racing track in Beringen, Belgium.
At the moment Rob uses a Canon EOS 1D Mark IV, but he is very tempted by the new EOS 1D X and EF-lenses.
2nd place: Max Riché, France
Max Riché is a freelance photographer who specialises in action, sports and lifestyle portraits. He is also the founder of ‘Climate Heroes’, a photo project about climate change across ten countries.
He is a former engineer, who graduated from Ecole Centrale (Lyon), Columbia (New York) and Cambridge (Boston) universities and went on to attended the famous Ecole des Gobelins in Paris to learn professional photography.
Max Riché‘s initial training as an engineer and scientist shows through these extremely sophisticated pictures. Taking them required a high degree of technical skill, as well as a long, close relationship with the athletes to depict their careers: from the keen sports amateur in normal clothes to the top level accomplished sportsman in the final image.
The fuzzy speed trails, artistically combined with the frozen moments, are what make these images so interesting.
3rd place: Elena Anosova, Russia
These photos were taken in Moscow at the final stage of the world FINA-2012 - The international Swimming Federation, during the diving. Elena took pictures throughout the day, but the most interesting shots came during the training session. She used Canon EOS 5D Mark III with the EF100-400mm F/4.5-5.6L IS USM and a shutter speed of around 1/25sec. ‘I wanted to show movement, and the speed of the athletes in free-fall.’ Elena says. ‘Shooting straight down helped to increase the feeling of the direction of their flight to the water, and to focus attention on the figures, separating them from the background.’
The only software manipulation Elena performs is black and white conversion and levels adjustment. She was inspired by Vladimir Vyatkin, the famous Russian photographer who made long exposure-photographs of girls swimming.
Elena is the art director of a publishing house in Moscow. She came to Moscow from Irkutsk City, where she lived before. Elena began taking pictures of people only after she moved from the countryside to the city, but still shoots nature when travelling. Some of her landscapes were included in the ‘Young Photographers of Russia’ and ‘Wild Nature of Russia’ exhibitions last year, and she reached the final of the National Geographic’s ‘Russian Landscape 2011’ competition.