The winners and finalists of the AIPP 2020 Silver Lining Photography Awards have been announced, and as you would expect there is some breathtaking imagery among the winners and runners-up.
Among the absolute highlights is a shot of the Apollo 11 memorial statue at Kennedy Space Center, sat beneath a spacecraft launch, as Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins gaze up to see the vehicle soaring towards the moon.
Other highlights include a black female subject winning first place in the Portrait category, a great double exposure scooping the top spot in Abstract, and a brilliant fractured portrait using water drops that won the Isolation category – along with some all-round brilliant black and white photography.
The Silver Lining Awards was an initiative by the Australian Institute of Professional Photography (AIPP) to keep its membership meaningfully engaged during the COVID-19 crisis, when restrictions meant that its regular print-based competitions could no longer be conducted.
“The idea was, quite literally, to create a ‘silver lining’ out of the current situation,” explained Tony Hewitt, Chair of the AIPP Awards Committee. “We wanted not only to give members a creative outlet at a time when many wouldn’t have much work, but also make the whole experience much more beneficial professionally for everybody who entered.
"At the same time, we wanted everybody to have a bit of fun. And it worked brilliantly; the response has been massive with 3,000 entries, from which we selected 300 semi-finalists and then 120 finalists, 10 in each of the 6 categories."
A $45,000 prize pool was raised, but the decision was made not to award a grand prize winner – rather, in the spirit of the competition, the winnings were evenly distributed among the first five winners in each category.
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More information, and the full gallery of winners and finalists, can be found at the AIPP website. The first-place images in each category are as follows…
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