This is it, the big day has arrived, Antarctica Day is happening today and with it, we can announce the winners of our photo competition.
But before releasing the name of the winners *** drum rolls **** both the Belgian and and the Dutch APECS committee would like to thank you all for making our competition such a success, be it by submitting photos, voting for them or even passing on the information: we had a total of 132 photos submitted, by 32 photographers !
All the photos should appear shortly on our wordpress under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, meaning that everyone is free to re-use them for non-commercial purposes, provide they acknowledge the photographer.
Overall winner
The facebook community has decided that Bartek Jerzak wins this competition with his photo showing “Gentoo penguins (Pygoscelis papua) in the vicinity of the H. Arctowski Polish Antarctic Station”. The beautiful photo received 101 likes.
Prizes from the committee
It has been an arduous task but both our committees have ranked every single picture, which enables us to highlight 15 other pictures that deserve your attention.
1. Stefan Hendrickx: “Sampling sea ice brines is sometimes a challenge”
2. Mario Hoppmann: “Sunset on sea ice frost flowers”
3. Jan Kavan: “A green colour, something one really appreciates in Antarctica”
4. Marcus Arnold: “Cuddling seals just off Ross Island“
5. Anton Van de Putte: “Iceberg 4, 2006 Broke-West Expedition on the Aurora Australis (AAD): the sun illuminates a streak of blue ice.”
6. Mario Hoppmann: “Older pancake ice dismantling “
7. Stefan Hendrickx: “Chinese (shadow) penguins“
8. Francesca Pasotti: “Permafrost mist”
9. Stef Lhermitte: “Underwater view of intra-glacial lake on Roi Baudouin ice shelf”
10. Jan Kavan: “View from James Ross Island across the Prince Gustav channel on Antarctic Peninsula”
11. Jean-Jacques Derwael: “Navigating with a compass for the direction, a bicycle wheel for the distance and a sled for topographic material, food and bedding”
12. Gauthier Carnat: “Happy seal”
13. Florian Deman: “Focus”
14. Erik Wurz: “Seal diving between sea-ice”
15. Esther Kokmeijer: “Taking water samples at Hope Bay”
Congratulations to you all!
You can all receive a prize, but you unfortunately have to come get it: the next time you are in Belgium (Brussels) or the Netherlands (Texel) let us know and we invite you for beer(s) or a non-alcoholic local specialty.
Also, we plan on printing your picture and showcasing it during the SCAR Biology Symposium in Leuven (July 2017)! You would of course be acknowledged for providing such beautiful artwork and we would then deliver one quality print to you to keep.
In addition to all those beautiful pictures that we have just highlighted, there are a few other photos/people to whom we would like to give a special mention:
1. Jean-Louis Tison: you receive the “I-believe-you-can-end-the-contest-now” award, for providing us with the best compilation of photos!
2. Bartek Jerzak: you are awarded the “How to make APECS Belgium and Netherlands famous in Poland” prize. Thank you for such good “likes harvest” on Facebook!
3. Frank Pattyn: you get the “morbidity prize” for submitting your photo entitled “Mummified seal in Wright Valley”.
4. Patrick Dauby: you get the prize of the “dirtiest picture” for your amazing shot entitled “”REFUGEES” are Chinstrap Penguins”.
5. Stef Lhermitte: you get the award of “the lousiest scientist joke” for your photo: “Wifi connection on the Roi Baudouin ice shelf. No password required” which still makes us laugh.
6. Brice Van Lieffering: you get the prize of the “best failed attempt of harvesting likes on facebook”. You might have won the people’s choice award if half of your friends would have liked the actual photo and not the post where you asked them to like the photo :-)
7. Jiayun Zhou: you get the special award “thinking out of the box” for your contribution “Thin section of sea ice collected at Cape Evans”
