What amazing portraits this year. And a huge congratulations to Jatenipat Ketpradit, the overall winner of the 2022 International Portrait Photographer of the Year. Jatenipat's portfolio of stunningly emotive portraits have taken him to the far corners of the globe and are cinematic in their presentation.
And congratulations to the category winners:
The Portrait Story: 1st Karen Waller; 2nd Peter Rossi; 3rd Kris Anderson.
The Family Sitting: 1st Stephanie Lachance; 2nd Brian Cassey; 3rd Peter Rossi.
The Environmental Portrait: 1st Daniel Taveira; 2nd Peter Rossi; 3rd Ovi D Pop.
The Character Study: 1st Guy Bellingham; 2nd Peter Rossi; 3rd Peter Rossi.
The overall first prize is US $3000, each category first prize $1000, with 2nd $500 and 3rd $250. Congratulations again to our winners.
However, the main aim of our Award is to be selected in the Top 101 portrait photographs of the year and be published in our annual book. As judges and successful entrants know, being a prize-winner is partly opinion and partly luck. That’s why we put more emphasis on being in the Top 101 as there is plenty of room for a variety of tastes, approaches and styles. And any of the Top 101 photographs could be a prize winner on the day.
You can see if you made it in the PDF flipbook at the bottom of this article - but please note this is a preliminary copy of the book. We have yet to add in the back stories behind the winning images and we need to update our judges' photos as well this will be updated in the next few weeks.
The book is published online and can be purchased as a 'real' hard-cover paper publication as well (it's proudly printed by Momento Pro in Australia and this year, we have arranged another printer for the many photographers outside of Australia who would like a copy without being charged Australia's horrendous postage costs).
Our judging process has been developed over several decades of competition experience. Once the first round of judging is completed, we have a score for each entry out of 300, expressed as percentage. We then take the top 10 scoring entries from each of the four categories and ask the judges to confirm their choice of 1st, 2nd and 3rd. When the initial score out of 100 is given, the judges are scoring against a standard of excellence, but when it comes to the final top 10, they are comparing the entries against each other and so this is an important part of a fair process.
New for this year, we take the top 10 portfolios of four entries and these are judged to determine the overall International Portrait Photographer of the Year.
For the book, we will take the top 10 entries from each category, and then a further 61 top scoring images, weighted for the number of entries in each category (categories with more entries will be more highly represented in this selection). We then check to ensure that there are not two or more photographs that are very similar (we are looking for variety) and there is also a limit on the number of photographs a single entrant can have in the Top 101 - no more than two, just to share the experience around. This produces our Top 101.
You might wonder why some of the prize winning photos are not in the Top 101. It is because of our competition rules. If a photographer entered more than two portraits, only the top two scoring entries are accepted into the Top 101. However, to be eligible for the prizes, we take the top 10 scoring entries in each category and invite the judges to have a second look. Some of the entrants had three or even more portraits in the top 10 of some categories and, while an entry may have had a slightly lower score initially, during the comparative review process outlined above, the judges elevated a lower initial score into the prizes. The judges have no idea what entries scored originally when they run through the review process, plus all six judges have a say, so hopefully this explains why some of the winning images are not also in the Top 101. They didn't miss out, their photographer was already fully represented!
This year we had 618 entries and to be sure of a place in the Top 101, you needed a score of around 81-85%, depending on the category you entered. A graph shows you the distribution of scores.
Our thanks to our wonderful judging team: David Burnett, Rocco Ancora, Martina Wärenfeldt, Sarah Edmunds, Tony Hewitt and last year's winner, Forough Yavari. And a big shout out to our wonderful sponsor, Momento Pro.
I hope you enjoy a collection of best portrait photographs from around the world in the flip-book below.
Peter Eastway
Chairman of Judges
International Portrait Photographer of the Year Awards
You can see the finalised Awards book below as a flipbook - please enjoy it. To enjoy it even more, you can purchase a paper copy of the book. Details available in our shop.