Wilderness Safaris announces photographic winners
Staff Writer | Friday November 29, 2019 09:52
This year the event encouraged participants to Capture the Soul of Africa through exceptional wildlife and landscape photography.
Now in its third year, the competition set out to harness Africa’s passion with images that inspire the positive action and help to conserve and restore the continent’s wilderness and wildlife.
The Overall Winner, Trevor Cole from Ireland, took a captivating image of a young Mundari herder in the midst of the cattle in his care in South Sudan.
Meanwhile, Claudio Macchetto from the United States was named Wilderness Safaris’ Overall Guest Winner for the image he took of a mountain gorilla silverback father nurturing his baby in Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda. All winners walk away with exciting safari prizes in Wilderness Safaris’ world-renowned and exclusive camps.
The grand prize also includes state-of-the-art Olympus camera equipment and charter flights.
“We received a particularly high calibre of entries showcasing Africa’s remarkable beauty, and would like to congratulate our winners and thank all our participants, who have played a significant part in ensuring that we continue to fulfil our purpose of protecting Africa’s wilderness and wildlife. The 4, 000 entries raised over R225,000, which will be channelled equally to our beneficiaries Children in the Wilderness, Namibia’s Desert Lion Conservation Project and our new Gishwati Reforestation Project in Rwanda”, Wilderness Safaris Senior Brand Manager Carel Loubser said in a press release.
Sponsored by and in partnership with, Olympus and Wild Shots Wildlife Photography Conference, the competition comprised five categories. These were African Wildlife, African Landscapes, Conserving Africa’s Wilderness, People or Cultures and Communities of Africa and lastly, Africa’s Plants and Insects.
Photographers, guests and Africa enthusiasts were invited to submit their favourite images taken anywhere on the continent.
The panel of judges was made up of highly esteemed wildlife photographers Isak Pretorius from South Africa, Will Burrad-Lucas from the United Kingdom and Michael Poliza from Germany, as well as Olympus Visionaries Chris Eyre-Walker and Tesni Ward.
Together, they looked for images that showed outstanding technical proficiency, artistic composition, uniqueness and impact.
“The images will make you realise just how much there is to explore on this continent. We are confident that our viewers will enjoy the online compilation, and hope that the images will help raise awareness for the much-needed conservation of Africa’s amazing biodiversity”, Carel noted.