Travel & Humanitarian Photos
Congratulations to Wink, winner of the 2007 Photoblog awards. Congratulations too to our friends at Chromasia for making it to the final ten and for scooping the title of Best European Photoblog.
Taking a look through the finalists’ web sites will give you a real treat, there is some really creative and quirky work being presented. One thing I did notice is that the photoblogs do seem to increasingly rely upon post-production effects. I’ve no argument against that, it’s all part of the production process and I admire the skill of those people who can manipulate their images in Photoshop to get the very best out of them.
It did strike me though that there seem to be fewer photographs that work purely on the subject matter and composition alone. I may have seen a skewed selection of pictures as I flicked briefly through the nominated web sites and it’s really just an observation in passing. There’s a certain, very obviously “Photoshopped” style that seems to be prevalent in Photoblogs these days. I’m not saying that’s a good or a bad thing, it just is.
One site that did buck that trend (to immediately contradict myself) was The G8 (pronounced “The Gate” not “Gee-Eight”), which has some lovely portraits.
There are some lovely, atmospheric pictures at SHOTZZ, some stunning black & white surfing shots at Shazeen Samad and some evocative landscape photographs at the photo-passion web site.
Each of the finalists’ web sites is thoroughly engaging and whatever the arguments about the relative health of the commercial side of photography, photography as an art form can surely never have been healthier or more popular. The ability for any photographer to so easily publish their work to a worldwide audience will undoubtedly continue to make photography an increasingly popular pastime, both for the takers and for the viewers. And Hurrah for that say I.