A popular photo contest in Nepal organised by the Photojournalist Club (PJ Club) has revealed its top selection and winners for the Nepali year 2073.
Shortlisting from 6670 photos submitted by 811 photographers, the club’s jury announced top photos in seven different categories. Three photos from each category including Culture and Tourism, Wildlife and Nature, Daily Life, News Photo, Nepal Smiles, Sports, and Photo Story made it to the award-winning list of this year.
1Photo of the Year
The top photo award of the contest – “Photo of the year” was presented to the photo taken by Deepak Ratna Bajracharya. The photo captioned Baisakh 12 was taken at Swayambhu on the day of 2015’s deadly earthquake in Nepal.
Baisakh 12
The winner was awarded with a cash prize of Nepali Rs. 100,000 in a recent event organised to reveal the selection and winning photos.
Here’re all other top photos selected in their respective categories along with their caption.
Category: Culture and Tourism
21st Photo – Dinesh Shrestha
Hindu women light oil lamps performing traditional rituals during Bala Chaturdashi festival at the Bajrabarahi temple in Lalitpur, Nepal, on Wednesday, September 15, 2014.
32nd Photo – Sambranda Bajracharya
People of different ethnic groups celebrating the festival of colors, Holi.
43rd Photo – Avash Karmacharya
Nepali festivals are Nepal’s rich heritage. Among many festivals, this one is the annual Kartik Naach (Dance of the deity Kartik) being staged at Patan Durbar Square. Kartik Naach is a month long traditional dance and drama festival that takes place in the Hindu lunar calendar month of Kartik, which falls in October/November.
Category: Daily Life
51st Photo – Naresh Shrestha
A girl jumps on top of sewage pipes.
62nd Photo – Gopen Rai
A woman walks with two children as they make their way from Samzong to Lomanthang. Upper Mustang, is a remote and isolated region of the Nepalese Himalayas. The Upper Mustang was a restricted demilitarized area until 1992 which makes it one of the most preserved regions in the world, with a majority of the population still speaking traditional Tibetic languages. Tibetan culture has been preserved by the relative isolation of the region from the outside world.
73rd Photo – Pratap Thapa
Women carrying the wooden frame to make the handmade Nepali paper at Sankhu,Kathmandu on Jan.9,2015. Handmade paper production is based on only handmade Nepali paper made from Lokta. Lokta is the raw material for Nepal’s most important indigenous paper found at the altitude of 6500 feet to 9500 feet from the sea level. Generally, the paper is used for official and ceremonial purposes, and it has been identified among the 19 major exportable goods of the country.
Category: Nature and Wild Life
81st Photo – Ramesh Kumar Poudel
Peacocks – Mayur Birds as seen in Chitwan National Park (Original caption in Nepali)
92nd Photo – Bishop Tamrakar
Summer Love
103rd Photo – Bikash Khadge
Owls are spotted sitting in hollow nest
Category: Nepal Smiles
111st Photo – Navesh Chitrakar
A boy carries a child on his back as they return home from school along the streets of Lalitpur July 2, 2013.
122nd Photo – Rajendra KC
Kathmandu Fun Park Kid happy mode – she also happens to be the only child enjoying this giant swing ride.
133rd Photo – Sulav Bhakta Shrestha
An elderly man has a jovial moment and relishes during a paddy plantation at jitpur fedi, Kathmandu.
Category: Sports
141st Photo – Surbindra Kumar Pun
152nd Photo – Robic Upadhayay
They call it the beautiful game, they say you can earn a fortune if you can play it good, like I care a bit. I play to enjoy, to forget the pain deep down under me. I don’t care about the beauty or the money. I just have to get my foot on the ball.
163rd Photo – Umesh Shrestha
Bird’s eye view of two mountain bikers in Muktinath, Mustang.
Category: News
171st Photo – Navesh Chitrakar
A body of a victim lies trapped in the debris after an earthquake hit, in Kathmandu, Nepal April 25, 2015. The shallow earthquake measuring 7.9 magnitude struck west of the ancient Nepali capital of Kathmandu on Saturday, killing around 9,000 people.
182nd Photo – Rajesh Gurung
Smoke and dust billow over the sky in Khokana village of Lalitpur district a couple of minutes after Nepal was hit by a magnitude 7.6 earthquake on Saturday, April 25, 2015. The earthquake killed more than 9,000 people, injured at least 23,000, wiped out 200,000 homes, 20,000 schools and destroyed more than 700 monuments.
193rd Photo – Laxmi Prasad Ngakhusi
Relatives console a mother after the final cremation who lost her dear ones during the earthquake that hit Nepal which cost thousands of lives and leaving many people homeless.
Category: Photo Story
1st- Nabin Baral : Victim of Superstition
2nd- Sagar Chhetri: Ecplise
3rd- Navesh Chitrakar: Nepal’s 68-year-old student
Photo stories were not included in the Press Kit from PJ Club to include them here.
The winners of each category are awarded with Rs. 30,000 while the first and second runners-up receive Rs. 20,000 and Rs. 10,000 respectively.
More about the PJ Club Photo Contest
The PJ club photo contest is the most popular photo contest in Nepal. Held yearly, the contest is into its fifth year with this competition for the year 2073.
As an umbrella organisation of photojournalists, PJ club promotes photography through various activities and this contest is one of the major activities of the club. The main aim of the event is to promote photography at a national level in Nepal in the international arena.
The photo competition is mainly sponsored by IME and Global IME Bank along with dozens of other commercial supporters. It is also widely supported by the major media publications of the country.
The competition, this year, received 6670 photos of Nepal in different categories from 811 photographers and the winning photos were selected by a seven-member jury led by Indian photojournalist Prashant Panjiar. Other members of the jury include journalist Kunda Dixit, photographer Mani Lama, curator Sangita Thapa, KU School of Art’s coordinator Sujan Chitrakar, photojournalist Narendra Shrestha, and Prakash Mathema.
In addition to the above award-winning photos, the best 150 photographs from the contest will be exhibited for five days in Kathmandu and in four major cities of outside Kathmandu including Biratnagar, Pokhara, Nepalgunj, and Dhangadhi.
The photo competition invites application each year from Nepali citizens asking them to submit photos taken in Nepal within last two years.
Few thoughts on the Photo Contest
It’s good to see such creative competitions organised in Nepal and even more exciting to see the enthusiastic participation of hundreds of photographers portraying our beautiful Nepal.
The photo contest is organised yearly by the Photo Journalists’ Club Nepal and receives thousands of submission every year.
The selected photos cover a wide range of Nepali issues, incidents and help us understand Nepal from different viewpoints.
Nepal went through several key incidents in the past year including the deadly Earthquake and the inhumane India blockade. I am sure these incidents were heavily photographed over the year.
While the top award winning photo and few other photos clearly manage to reflect the major incident of the earthquake, I wonder why the other blockade issue didn’t make it to the top selection.
What do you think of the selection of top photos this year?