The World Photography Awards (WPA), sponsored by Sony, proudly announces an impressive number of entries in its inaugural year. Submissions closed on 31st January with a total of 25,934 amateur photograph entries and 44,641 professional photograph entries across the categories.
The anticipation of the shortlist announcement grows with the revelation that the winner of the amateur competition will be awarded a substantial $5,000 cash prize, donated by Sony. This is in addition to being named ‘Sony World Photography Awards Amateur Photographer of the Year’ and flown out as a VIP to attend the Awards ceremony in Cannes on 24th April 2008.
The selection process has also been heightened with the news that Saatchi Online, one of the biggest names in the arts and photography world, has signed up to partner the awards and support the amateur community. SaatchiOnline will make a special selection of 100 images from the highly commended amateur entries, to be displayed on the ‘Saatchi Online Gallery Wall’ in Cannes during the Awards and exhibition in April. This will be followed by the launch of the ‘WPA Image Bank’ on Saatchi Online which will feature up to 1,000 top commended amateur images for commercial sale.
Scott Gray, Founder of Sony World Photography Awards commented, “When the World Photography Awards launched last year, we were delighted when Sony came on board as our headline sponsor. This additional support from Saatchi Online further strengthens our ability to raise the profile of photography on both a professional and amateur level.â€
I did not realise that my comment would be visible to all (rather than just David and Shirley), so after the event perhaps it would be better if you could erase my comment.
However, the URL for the Sony Forum is (if you are logged in to the competition site)
//www.worldphotographyawards.org/forum
with the content appearing on
//www.worldphotographyawards.org/forum.asp?FORUM_ID=1
and then the General Discussion about judging on
//www.worldphotographyawards.org/forum.asp?FORUM_ID=85
Can you give a URL for this forum Peter? As you will realise, SWPA is a concept sold to Sony by an independent entrpreneur, who would have had the Canon WPA or Samsung WPA just as willingly except for some good contact with Sony. I guess that a lot of the internal stuff, like the Travel Photographer of the Year Competition, is very much down to the independent side
The whole thing sounds like a nightmare – 70,000 entries compared to say 3,000 for a major international salon or pro competition, and even that takes several days for a proper judging panel to assess. Frankly, if you install a ‘filter’ system to chuck out ‘clearly not winner’ material at any early stage, you risk losing the winners as well, as good photography may be unconventional and it takes many opinions to avoid rejection of material which is not immediately reiminiscent of established winning styles.
But they wanted it big and they got it big.
David
I suggest that you look at the General Discussion on the Sony WPA Forum for Amateurs, as there has been several negative comments made about the recent announcement by Sony on the changes to the judging.