Best photos of year to be chosen

ISTANBUL

The National Geographic magazine gave the first place to a photo titled ‘Splashing,’ taken by Shikhei Goh in Indonesia. The photo captures a water-flinging dragonfly.

National Geographic announced the winners of its 2011 global-wide photography contest Dec. 23, reported British Daily Mail.

The winners were selected from digital submissions broken into the three categories of “People,” “Places” and “Nature.” The competition was judged by three National Geographic photographers, who gave equal weight to both creativity and photographic quality when deciding on the winners.

Overall first place went to a photo titled “Splashing,” capturing a water-flinging dragonfly. It was taken by Shikhei Goh when he was in Indonesia’s Riau Islands and had been caught in a sudden downpour with his subject.

According to contest judge Peter Essick, the photograph gave the insect “character us humans can relate to…It is rare indeed to see a photograph that causes the viewer to feel a bond with a member of the animal world.”

Goh won $10,000 and a paid trip to Washington, D.C. to attend a photography seminar and tour of the National Geographic building. His photo will also appear in the magazine, the Daily Mail reported.
In the “Places” category, a photo titled “Into the Green Zone” won for its depiction of a rainbow bending over a smooth ocean in Onuk Island in the Philippines.

According to contest judge Mr. Laman, photographer George Tapan showed a perfect sense of timing and composition in the way he captured the two small human subjects in this beautiful scene, and it was this that really made the shot.
For the category of “People,” a photo titled “The Fjellman Family” by Izabelle Nordfjell captures a Swedish reindeer hunter seeking food for his family using a rifle. According to the judge Amy Toensing, the photo encapsulated a fleeting moment, “real and mysterious at the same time.”