Round two of the 500px and Neil Dankoff Photography Competition has come to an end. The judges were blown away with the submissions and after much deliberation, we couldn’t be more excited to announce the winners, runner-ups, and honorable mentions from the competition.

Before we get into the winners, here is a recap of the amazing prizes:

First place category winners:

Work featured in a Neil Dankoff Gallery show. The winning photographs will be professionally printed and mounted by Print Partners
Capture One Pro software from B3K
The Diskashur M2-Pin Authenticated, 2TB USB portable SSD from iStorage
A premium coffee table book featuring the winner’s own photos from Pikto
Diamond polished 1” thick acrylic block featuring a photo of your choice from BumbleJax
Guru Bundle: includes Luminar AI, Aurora HDR, 1-year Luminar X membership, and more from Luminar

Runners-up and honorable mentions:
Each photographer will have their photo featured on 500px and Neil Dankoff’s website and receive a one year 500px Pro membership.

Grand Prize Winner:
One photographer will win a photography trip of a lifetime aboard the one-of-a-kind Rascal Voyages Yacht around Komodo National Park, in Indonesia.

Drum roll, please…

Grand Prize Winner and First place: In the City

Photo by Daria Klepikova

Daria is a multigenre photographer who has been honing her craft for the past five years. Instead of limiting herself to one specialty, she works in portraiture, street, and mobile photography. Her creative spark was spurred on by family trips as a child, this interest in capturing moments later developed into her dream job. Today she uses the camera as a means of self-expression, the resulting images are a unique combination of harmony and beauty.

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First place: Golden Hour

Photo by Vladimir Karamazov

Vladimir is an actor turned photographer who sees the art of image-making as a challenge that invites him to create. Enticed by the nature of phones and how it has turned the general public into image-makers, his drive to stand out from the floods of photos was what made him into the photographer he is today. He has awards such as the People’s Photographer of the Year at the Moscow International Awards, Chromatic Award 2020, Monovision 2021, and TIFA 2020 under his belt yet he believes the real win at the end of the day is the ability his practice has given him to meet new people and visit unknown places.

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First place: People/ Portrait

Photo by Marc Lamey

Marc is a portrait and fashion photographer based in Paris, France. Marc elevates his editorial photography through expert retouching and creative shoot concepts. This finetuning of his style to reflect a specific aesthetic has gotten his work in front of a global audience with features in Compétence Photo, PhotoTech and The Untold to name a few.

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First place: Landscape

Photo by Tomas Havel

Tomas is a self-taught, award-winning landscape photographer based in the Czech Republic with work published worldwide. His body of work is influenced by the early experience of growing up in a beautiful forest region with the ability to explore the wild and spend time with nature. His childhood coupled with a desire to create made him into the photographer he is today. He aims to capture a pristine landscape by using his own vision and unique style to show some of the most amazing places on Earth. Tomas often uses humans for scale, showing dramatic surroundings for comparison and reminding viewers of the majestic nature of our planet. Publication features include National Geographic, Nasa and Discovery.

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First place: Wildlife

Photo by Andrea Izzotti

Andrea is an Italian photographer based in Genoa, he is passionate about traveling and is naturally curious which results in images that feel intuitively timed. For those familiar with the “decisive moment” coined by Henri Cartier-Bresson, it is in the same vein that Andrea is able to create stunning images. There is little preparation but instead, he instantly recognizes when a moment cannot be recreated and clicks his shutter, resulting in remarkable shots with a nod to the beauty of nature.

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First place: Pandemic Diaries

Photo by Jason Au

Jason is an award-winning fine art photographer based in Hong Kong. He uses black & white photography to expertly tell a narrative through an image. Jason’s work incorporates creative, geometric and balanced compositions, with prominent use of contrasting light and shadows. His street photography series ‘Geometric Hong Kong’ portrays the way of life of urban characters in the context of their surrounding geometric and labyrinthine environment, which works metaphorically to imply urbanity within modern metropolises.

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