PHOTOGRAPHY HIPA Announces the Winners of its 5th Season Merit Medals

The Board of Trustees of the Hamdan Bin Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum International Photography Award (HIPA) has selected 20 photographs for the Merit Medals, recognising the quality of entries that reached the final stages in HIPA’s Fifth Season, Happiness. The winners will also receive a copy of the HIPA’s Fifth Season Annual Book, which presents the winning and nominated entries, which include the recipients of the Merit Medals.

"These Medals recognise the photographers whose high-calibre entries qualified for the final stages of selection by HIPA’s judges. Through the awarding of the Merit Medals, the Board of Trustees not only want to recognise the high quality of the photographers work, but to also encourage and support them to continue developing their craft," said Ali Khalifa Bin Thalith, Secretary General of HIPA. Five medals are given in each category of the Fifth Season of the competition.

Bin Thalith added, "Judging photographs entered in HIPA is subject to a set of well-established universal fundamentals of photography which are governed and based on a series of reason and intellectually based criteria, which take precedence over any emotional bias or feelings evoked by the artistic spirit or personal traits displayed in the photographs. To ensure a healthy balance, the Board of Trustees deemed it was fair assess the rational and objective an artwork alongside thepersonal artistic emotions or feelings that seek stunning aesthetic expressions, which were evident in some of the entries. These entries are worthy of a mention and the photographers who made them deserve recognition. As such, the Board harnessed these set of criteria to select and recognise these entries."

20 Photographs Awarded with the Merit Medals

FATHER & SON

Alisson Jonas Cardoso Gontijo, Brazil / Courtesy of HIPA

Juan Sebastian Rene Castaneda, Peru / Courtesy of HIPA

Nenad Martic, Croatia / Courtesy of HIPA

Khamis Al Ghafri, Oman / Courtesy of HIPA

Jiang- Liu, China / Courtesy of HIPA

HAPPINESS

Archielou Romero, Philippines / Courtesy of HIPA

Shafayet Hossain Apollo, Bangladesh / Courtesy of HIPA

Sarah Wouters, Netherlands / Courtesy of HIPA

Lasse Bak Mejlvang, Denmark / Courtesy of HIPA

Salah Al Rawas, Oman / Courtesy of HIPA

GENERAL

Dmitriy Vladimirovich Ageyev, Russian Federation / Courtesy of HIPA

Jiansheng Hu, China / Courtesy of HIPA

/ Courtesy of HIPA

Ako Salemi, Iran / Courtesy of HIPA

Alexandra Ann Novitske, United-States / Courtesy of HIPA

WILDLIFE

Maitham Al Mesri, Kuwait / Courtesy of HIPA

Pratik Pradhan, India / Courtesy of HIPA

Alexandre Méaux, France / Courtesy of HIPA

Bence Mate, Hungary / Courtesy of HIPA

Zaw Min Latt, Myanmar / Courtesy of HIPA

The Medals measure 15 centimetres in diameter and are nickel-plated, with the name of the award engraved in both English and Arabic. The design of the Medal was made by renowned Emirati artist, Mr. Matar bin Lahej, and manufactured by the famous UK-based craft house, Thomas Fattorini.

The award ceremony for HIPA’s Fifth Season was held in mid-March, celebrating all the winners in the Season’s categories including the main them Happiness along with Father and Son, Wildlife and General Category. Each winner was recognised on stage and received their respective Award trophy.

See the HIPA Winners of the 5th Season

See the coverage of the HIPA Grand Award Ceremony

Watch the video: Grand Event HIPA 2016 Happiness Full Show