This is it, the post you've been waiting for, the wait is over, we have a winner!
First off I'd like to apologize for the delay in announcing the winner, or I guess more accurately the premature post claiming that we'd be announcing the winner on the same day that the contest ended. In a perfect world that would have been the case, and if the win had been by a large margin that would have been an easy thing to do. However it wasn't a large margin, and there was a lot of checking of votes that was done to make sure everything was fully legit. I know a lot of you have been waiting patiently, and some not so patiently. Your wait is over. After a total of 275,329 contest votes the whole thing came down to a difference of only
68 votes between the last two images:
Going into this round there were two images that could win, and there were varied opinions from a great many people about which one should be the winner. The thing that really surprised me though is how many great comments there were about each shot. There was no one sided bias in the comments, and that's a great thing, it means that it all worked out fairly well and two amazing shots made it into the final. If the comments and the votes had all been one sided we would have had to question how the lesser liked image made it in, but as it was it was tight competition. The final votes came in on Saturday, and in the end it was 50.4% to 49.6% in favor of John Wellburn's shot of Darren Berrecloth in the Gobi Desert.
The Winner of the 2011 Pinkbike Photo of the Year Contest
Pinkbike would like to congratulate John on his win, and also Grzegorz Wawryczuk for making it into the final round, it was a tight competition!
John wins a Complete 2012 Specialized Demo (MSRP $6600) and ANY F-stop bag plus 2 ICU's plus a Dakota accessory kit (MSRP $500), as well as all the prizes from the previous rounds.
Round of 32 - All 32 receive a pair of SPY Sunglasses (MSRP $120 each)
Round of 16 - All 16 receive two pairs of Tioga Psycho Genius tires (MSRP $200 for two pairs)
Round of 8 - All 8 receive a set of Black Race Face Atlas cranks (MSRP $339.99 each)
Round of 4 - All 4 receive a Marzocchi 66RC3 Evo Ti (MSRP $1199.00 each) and an F-stop Guru bag with ICU (MSRP $245 each)
Thanks to
Specialized,
Marzocchi,
Race Face,
Tioga,
F-Stop Gear and
Spy
And yeah... chair lift shot does it for me too... not loosing sleep over it though.
Remember, second place still got a LOT of prizes and exposure which is something to be stoked about enough.
As far as gear goes, the last time I saw Wellburn, this fall, he was riding an older xc hardtail, so I'm pretty sure he's stoked to win the Demo
Congrats John!!
my opinion - they are both awesome and in a way they compliment one another, one is yellow, one is blue, one is going up, one is coming down. yin and yang my brothers and sisters. too bad there isn't another demo kicking around for #2, but hey I'm sure that dude is stoked to get all this press! I was gonna say he's the "people choice" but that's not true is it.
Oh by the way, do we get a comment from all the judges about why this photo has won?
sorry i have exams today and i needed to let go off some frustration
Oh yeah, it's funny seeing people asking the winner to give up his prizes-- why on EARTH would he do that? Ok he is pro, but he's pro for a reason- HE'S GOOD AT WHAT HE DOES!! No matter how old you are you can't beat getting a new bike- let's leave the man to enjoy his!!
this two photos are better than those other final two.
www.pinkbike.com/photo/6219822
www.pinkbike.com/photo/7333621
It was net meant as criticism, thought it would be a sweet thing to let the judges say something about their best 5 shots or whatever, or just about the winning shot. Just an idea.
Cheers.
@katinas it would be good a good thing to have the judges say something about both of the winning images, and also about the initial selection. I'll see what I can arrange...
hardly a f*cking council estate to stardom story. They are like 1k for the body, get your head out of your arse Hylands
My experience in the design world.. A large proportion of a pay check will be spent on travel/living costs and pumped back into kit, that's if the client pays up on time. Throw into the mix the fact that there's always someone who will be prepared to work for free, for experience. I can guarantee a lot of the photographers on the hill do it for the love and really don't earn a great deal!
My comment was primarily in response to the first comment "big-shot professional who gets paid to travel the world with film crews and has stacks of gear already..." and several others that were similar. John is far from being a "big-shot" photographer, I guarantee you he paid for the trip to the Gobi desert out of his own pocket and had to recover that from money made selling the photos, and I also guarantee that he doesn't have "stacks of gear"
I'm not trying to put you down, but seeing as you told me I have my head up my arse I think I need to clarify that. I'm a professional photographer who knows what he's talking about, you're an 18 year old kid who doesn't. Please take the time to think before typing.
thanks!
By the way in Britain being 18 doesn't make me a 'kid'.
What I'm trying to say is that the distinction between professional photographer and hobby photographer in terms of quality of image is not always that great. So there is no real reason to exclude pros from a competition. And it would be far to difficult to define who was a pro and who wasn't.
Nice job on the contest PB!
One thing though, is Bearclaw coming towards us or going away from us? I can't tell and whilst irrelevant, it's annoying me.
And for all those talking about John being a big time pro you need to learn a little about what you're talking about. The last time I saw John (Crankworx this summer) he was shooting with pretty old beat up gear, and while he may be a "pro" he's hardly what I would call big time. He needs that gear just as much as anyone else. Probably more so because he's a pro, it's not a high paying job... If you look at the metadata for this shot it was taken with a Nikon D300, not even a newer D300s but a plain old D300. That's a borderline consumer camera that's more than 3 years old... End quote.
MEGA PROPS TO JOHN! I'm sure Grzegorz is more than happy with coming second place to a great shot like that. If anything its given him confidence to carry on and take even better shots! John deserves the prize just as much as anyone else and people should stop being so jealous!
many thanks
a jelous 18 year old.
I WANT YOUR BIKE!!!!!!
Props to both guys, I'd be stoked to have either photo in my portfolio (though more stoked to have the 2nd since it would have meant I won a sick bike...)
PROPS to the photographer!!!! You got my vote mate!!! Enjoy your new bike and give us more of this shots in the future!!!
Now Now..!
#1 is clearly the WINNER...!!!
These two deserve a giant version of them in my living room
P.S: With all of these great photos, a poster service on the online shop could be a really nice thing. What do you think Pinkbike?
0.5% to win poland rulez
zdravim P.
Congratulations to John but next year please take a part in World Press Photo instead of POY.
Grzegorz have fun with all of prizes from your road to the finals.
www.pinkbike.com/photo/7186594
PB, Is this a joke?
www.ridesfo.com/servlet/the-358/rideSFO-Freerider-Red-Red/Detail