Archives: December2008

• NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC ANNOUNCES WINNERS OF THIRD INTERNATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY CONTEST

  WASHINGTON (Dec. 18, 2008)—Contestants from The Netherlands, Slovenia and China are the grand-prize winners in the National Geographic Society’s third global photography contest, conducted in partnership with 24 local-language editions of the Society’s flagship National Geographic magazine and its English-language edition.

  Ilvy Njiokiktjien of The Netherlands won in the People category; Ales Kreze of Slovenia won in the Places category; and Kechun Zhang of China won in the Nature category. Runners-up were CanCan Chu of China and Zdenek Srubar of Czech Republic in the People category; Yuniadhi Agung of Indonesia and Setsuko Sugino of Japan in the Places category; and Se Won Park of Korea and Silvia Martinez Dominguez of Spain in the Nature category.

  The three grand-prize winners will receive an all-expenses-paid trip to National Geographic headquarters, where they will receive their awards. The winning photographs will be published in a future edition of National Geographic magazine. These images and other entries can be viewed at ngm.nationalgeographic.com/photo-contest.

  The three top photographs were chosen from a pool of nearly 223,000 entries from the participating countries, up from 148,000 in 2007. Each country held national contests and, in the final round, sent one photo from each of the three categories to National Geographic’s Washington headquarters for judging. Judges were Maggie Steber, National Geographic photographer; Elizabeth Krist, National Geographic magazine senior photo editor; and Darren Smith, National Geographic magazine design editor.

  The participating local-language editions were from Brazil, Bulgaria, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Korea, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Thailand and Turkey. The contest was open to all National Geographic magazine readers in those nations, and the photographers could be professional or amateur.

  National Geographic is synonymous with unparalleled photographic excellence. The magazine draws on the best photographers around the world and devotes more resources to photography than any other general- interest magazine. Since the 1890s, National Geographic photographers have captured images of places where readers could not go themselves: places too far, too deep, too dark, too dangerous.

  Recent advances in photographic technology have illuminated and captured much of the previously unknown. Through the lenses of National Geographic photographers, readers have been able to view unique life forms on the ocean floor, visit sunken ships, explore Egyptian tombs, “see” the temperature ranges of a star, discover the hidden world inside our bodies, observe the microscopic world of molecules and subatomic particles, and savor the perfect structure of a snowflake.

  Today, National Geographic’s photographic archive contains 10.5 million images; a majority of these are available for publishing, advertising and other commercial uses. National Geographic offers photography workshops and photography expeditions and publishes photography field guides as well as signature coffee-table photo books.

  The National Geographic Society is one of the world’s largest nonprofit scientific and educational organizations. Founded in 1888 to “increase and diffuse geographic knowledge,” the Society works to inspire people to care about the planet. It reaches more than 325 million people worldwide each month through its official journal, National Geographic, and other magazines; National Geographic Channel; television documentaries; music; radio; films; books; DVDs; maps; exhibitions; school publishing programs; interactive media; and merchandise. National Geographic has funded more than 9,000 scientific research, conservation and exploration projects and supports an education program combating geographic illiteracy. For more information, visit nationalgeographic.com.