The Hong Kong Photo Contest 2024

The Hong Kong Photo Contest 2024, organised by National Geographic, is open for entries for photos taken in Hong Kong before 3 December 2024.

This year’s six categories: City; Wildlife; Landscape; People; Mobile and Sports.

Winners will be chosen in March 2025, with the winner’s photograph in each category being published in National Geographic magazine (Traditional Chinese edition).

Submission guidelines can be found here

The Hong Kong Photo Contest 2021 Winners

The winners of The Hong Kong Photo Contest 2021 organised by National Geographic – for photos taken in Hong Kong before 3 December 2021 – have been announced. There is no overall winner, just winners in each of the six categories: City; Wildlife; Landscape; People; Mobile and Short Video.

“It has allowed me to once again renew my perspective on Hong Kong’s urban, cultural and natural features,” said National Geographic Documentary director Andrew Yao about judging the entries. “A video entry that chronicled the Yau Ma Tei Car Park Building before its demolition impressed me the most this year. Using time-lapse photography, the videographer [So Ka Chun] succinctly captured the tenseness of Hong Kong’s daily life as well as the monotonous, if not mechanical pace of the city. It is a requiem for historical buildings, which when combined with its wonderful ending and soulful soundtracks, makes for a touching and deeply impressive piece of video work.”

There is a virtual exhibition of the winning entries at hkphotocontest.com/exhibition.asp which is online until 31 July 2022.

Instagram links to winners added – some beautiful images of Hong Kong.

City Winner: Cheung Chun Him, JeremyMan in the Mirrors

https://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2022/The-Hong-Kong-Photo-Contest-2021/i-PM3XWBW

Wildlife Winner: Lee Ying Wah – Caught It!

https://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2022/The-Hong-Kong-Photo-Contest-2021/i-Q8Bb3V4

Landscape Winner: Tse Hon MingBlossom in the Sea

https://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2022/The-Hong-Kong-Photo-Contest-2021/i-rj8fn3t

People Winner: Leung Hon ShingDuty

https://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2022/The-Hong-Kong-Photo-Contest-2021/i-Bz9bKNn

Mobile Winner: Chiu Bong Chi, DominicCrimson Tide

https://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2022/The-Hong-Kong-Photo-Contest-2021/i-pvszWt2

Short Video Winner: So Ka ChunStay

https://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2022/The-Hong-Kong-Photo-Contest-2021/i-LndLmMP

An exhibition of winning entries will be held at Gallery by the Harbour, Harbour City dates to be confirmed.

Hong Kong Underwater Photo Competition 2021 Winners

The winners of the 10th Hong Kong Underwater Photo Competition 2021 – for photos taken in the year up to 30 September 2021 – have been announced and the winner in the Macro & Close-Up category is Fran Cheung for her image “Single-eyed Hairy Shrimp” (above) taken off  Yin Tsz Ngam. While Henry Li is the Champion of the Standard and Wide Angle Category.

Macro & Close-Up

First Runner-up: 
Poon Yiu Nam David – I Believe I Can Fly, taken off East Dam

Second Runner-up: 
Henry Li

Standard & Wide Angle Champion: Henry Li

First Runner-up: 
Yu Wing Chung

Second Runner-up: 
Ho Tsz Hung Daniel

Exhibition of winning entries will be held as follows:

Date: 28 November – 2 December 2021
Time: 10am to 7pm
Venue: Venue A, Level 7, Fortune Metropolis, Hung Hom

Date: 2-6 January, 2022
Time: 10am to 7pm
Venue: Atrium C, L2, MOSTown, Ma On Shan

There is also a virtual exhibition of the winning entries at www.golocal360.co/HKUPVC2021/index.htm which is online until 27 November, 2022.

A booklet about this year’s competition and the winners can be downloaded here

Photography for Myanmar

80 photographers have donated work to support journalists and photographers in Myanmar.

Print for Crisis is offering the donated images, created in Myanmar by local and international artists, as 20x30cm prints with an image size 20 x 30cm at GBP90 each – in a limited edition of ten, numbered and unsigned.

All net proceeds will go to journalists, photographers, and artists in Myanmar and are available for sale until 12 May, 2021.

Among the photographers who have contributed are Jo Farrell, Nathan Horton, Lukas Birk, Jittrapon Kaicome – see all the photographs on the website, Instagram and Facebook.

Personally, we hate the term ‘net proceeds’ as you’re never exactly know how much will be donated to the cause you are supporting.

Images copyright of their owners

1.2 Billion Pixel Panorama of Mars

NASA’s Curiosity rover captured this high-resolution panorama of the Martian surface between Sol 3057 (12 March) and Sol 3062 (17 March 2019).

http://www.360cities.net/image/mars-gigapixel-panorama-curiosity-solar-day-3060#342.00,-2.90,35.5

The version without the rover contains 136 images from 34-millimeter Mast Camera; a version with the rover contains 260 images from 100-millimeter telephoto Mast Camera. Both versions are composed of more than 396 images that were carefully stitched.

Scott Guzewich an Atmospheric Scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center commented about the image “Humans minds don’t easily comprehend the vast eons of time that separate us from the places we explore in space with robots like Curiosity. Our minds are designed to think in terms of hours, days, seasons, and years, extending up to a duration of our lifetime and perhaps those a few generations before us.

When we explore Mars, we’re roving over rocks that formed billions of years ago and many of which have been exposed on the surface for at least tens or hundreds of millions of years. It’s a gap of time that we can understand numerically, but there’s no way to have an innate feel for the incredible ancientness of the planet and Gale Crater.”

More panoramas of Mars by Curiosity rover: http://www.360cities.net/sets/curiosity-mars

Mars Upclose…

The European Space Agency (ESA) has released a trove of almost 100,000 images of the red planet. Captured by the Visual Monitoring Camera (VMC) onboard the Mars Express orbiter the images were taken between 2007 and 2020.

There are also images of the release of the Beagle 2 lander in 2003. While the images have been released for scientific study, the public can browse them as well.

The image archive has hundreds of photos of Mars taken from orbit, showing the huge range of geographical features and diverse formations found on the planet. In the collage of images here, you can see everything from dust and water over the north pole (first image, top row), to an unusual cloud formation called the Arsia Mons Elongated Cloud (second image, top row), to a double cyclone raging over the planet’s north pole (fourth image, top row), to the enormous structures of the Tharsis Volcanoes and Olympus Mons (third image, second row), to the Valles Marineris canyon system (third image, third row).

The VMC was originally intended to observe the release of the British Beagle 2 lander, transported to Mars by ESA in 2003. However the lander disappeared after its deployment and its exact fate remained unknown until 2015, when NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s HiRISE camera captured its location. From the images, engineers could see that Beagle 2 landed safely but failed to deploy two of its solar panels, meaning it was not able to communicate with Earth.

Despite the failure of the Beagle 2 mission, the VMC was repurposed in 2007, and has been used to capture images for various scientific papers about Mars.

Note that the images have been adjusted for sensor ‘noise’ and variations in pixel sensitivity and the results are stunning.

Image: ESA Planetary Science Archive

Joe Bananas 21 Anniversary – 29 September, 2007

Joe Bananas, a Hong Kong institution, turned 21 on the 29 September, 2007

Click on any image or here for the full gallery of photographs.

https://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2007/Joe-Bananas-21-Anniversary-29-Sept-2007/i-c4Lwb9W

https://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2007/Joe-Bananas-21-Anniversary-29-Sept-2007/i-k6CPXHt

https://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2007/Joe-Bananas-21-Anniversary-29-Sept-2007/i-26jrkRq

https://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2007/Joe-Bananas-21-Anniversary-29-Sept-2007/i-FZVd5P9

https://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2007/Joe-Bananas-21-Anniversary-29-Sept-2007/i-r7T8BSZ

Ricks Cafe – 15 December 2003

Rick’s Cafe celebrated another awesome year on the 15 December, 2003

Click on any image or here for the full gallery of photographs.

https://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2003/Ricks-cafe-anniversary-15/i-pqWc7cp

https://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2003/Ricks-cafe-anniversary-15/i-3wrzwrm

https://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2003/Ricks-cafe-anniversary-15/i-XpLRV6t

https://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2003/Ricks-cafe-anniversary-15/i-sgP4gcz

https://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2003/Ricks-cafe-anniversary-15/i-PhWQj84