The Siena Creative Photo Awards is a little different from your average photo contest. Celebrating all kinds of post-production techniques and digital manipulations, this contest aims to redefine the art of photography and this year’s winners are defiantly weird and wonderful.
The Creative Photo Awards is a smaller photography contest run under the umbrella of the Siena International Photo Awards. Unlike other photography contests that often seek to limit Photoshop tinkering, the Creative Photo Awards invite a kind of maximalist sensibility setting no rule on how much post-production work can be done to an image.
“What matters is your unique vision and your skills in translating that vision into exceptional and original work,” the contest explains on its website. “Show us how you’re pushing the photographic medium, experimenting with different techniques or creative approaches to bring your ideas to life.”
Spanning a massive 17 categories, the contest covers everything from the conventional (Animals, Landscapes, Architecture) to the unusual (Still Life, Fashion, Weddings, Food).
This years overall Photo of the Year Prize went to Andre Boto, a freelance photographer from Portugal. His winning entry, titled The False Illusion, depicts the ways giant corporations divert attention away from the pollution caused by large-scale manufacturing.
Other highlights include a surreal time-lapse shot of skiers sliding down a mountain in Iceland at night, a wine bottle opener turned into a ballerina and, of course, a shot of an ostrich on roller skates outrunning a pack of dogs.
Take a look through our gallery at more hand-picked highlights from this year’s spectacular shots.
Source: Siena Awards