Gabriel Rojas wins Woophy International Photo Contest

Press Release:

The winning image taken by Gabrial Rjas

A Colombian photo of anti-Bush demonstration has won first prize in Woophy’s third international photo contest. An independent jury consisting of Vincent Mentzel, Michiel Munneke (Director

of World Press Photo) and others, chose the winning photograph by Gabriel Rojas from Bogotá, Colombia, out of more than 3.000 submissions. The jury praised the picture by Rojas for its powerful contrast between the police vehicle on the foreground and the vulnerable demonstrator in the back. A current and symbolic image that illustrates how some regimes across the world still deal with opposition.

The other prizewinners submitted photos of a variety of events such as a soccer game in Onkerzele (Belgium), an airplane crash in Sao Paolo (Brazil), and street kids in Ulan Bator (Mongolia). All in all, the jury awarded 17 prizes in three different categories. The first prizewinner receives amongst others an Olympus E-410 SLR camera. The main sponsors of the contest are Olympus and Lulu.com.

Theme and goal of the contest
Each year Woophy organises a photo contest with the idea of capturing the current state of affairs on earth in photographs. Last year we chose the theme ‘What’s news to you’ in order to search for the small and personal vision on news, by all Woophy members. In the end, many of the submitted photographs dealt with international news events. Probably because there’s always one of our 25,000 amateur reporters happening upon a flood or a crash, somewhere in the world.