"Grietas" by Carlos de Cos wins the 9th edition of CVCEPHOTO
The second prize went to Krystle Wright's “Seventh Serpent”, and the third to Simon Carter's “Don't wet yourself”.
The BBK Mendi Film Bilbao-Bizkaia poster award went to Yhabril Moro for his photography “X-Man”, and the FIFAD poster award went to Andreas Busslinger's “Black Ice”.
The ninth edition of CVCEPHOTO
The Club Vasco de Camping Elkartea mountain club from San Sebastian organizes for the ninth consecutive year its CVCEPHOTO international mountain activity photography contest, which has brought together, as in previous editions, the best professional and amateur photographers in the field from around the world.
The jury has chosen the 20 winners among the thousand photographs submitted to the contest by authors coming from more than 50 countries. Among the winners are authors from Australia, Switzerland, Argentina, Poland, Italy, Spain, USA, Slovenia and Germany.
The awarded photographs
The contest jury has awarded the first prize and €1,400 to the Spanish photographer Carlos de Cos Azkona for his photograph “Cracks”, a spectacular aerial photograph of a cyclist over the arid terrain of the Yesa reservoir in Spain. The image was captured in September of last year, when the reservoir’s water level was at a critical low of 15% due to the drought that hit Europe and the Iberian peninsula last year.
Australian photographer Krystle Wright, also awarded in previous editions of CVCEPHOTO, has won the second prize and €700 with her photograph “Seventh Serpent”, capturing a climber climbing the route of the same name in the Long Canyon in southeastern Utah, USA.
Australian photographer Simon Carter, also awarded in several previous editions of CVCEPHOTO, has won the third prize and €300 for his photograph “Don't wet yourself”, taken in front of the Katoomba waterfalls in the Australian Blue Mountains, while climbing the route that gives name to the photo.
The remaining seventeen photographs have been awarded with Honorable Mentions and in them, in addition to skiing or climbing, other activities that take place in the mountains are represented, such as hiking, bouldering or paragliding.
BBK Mendifilm Bilbao-Bizkaia Poster Award
As every year, CVCEPHOTO has awarded among the submissions those photos that, thanks to their collaboration agreements, will serve as the main poster in two mountain film festivals included in the calendar of the International Alliance for Mountain Film (IAMF):
The winner of the BBK Mendifilm Bilbao-Bizkaia Poster Award has been the Spanish Yhabril Moro for his photograph “X-Man” of a runner under the Sorrosal Waterfall in Ordesa (Spain). In addition to this award, Yhabril has also won an Honorable Mention in this edition of CVCEPHOTO for his photograph “The Phantom”, which shows a free-rider skier descending at full speed from Pico Malacara after the first snowfall. from last season.
Likewise, the Swiss Andreas Busslinger has won the FIFAD Poster Award (the Les Diablerets film festival, in Switzerland) and €700 for his photograph “Black Ice”, in which three paragliders glide over the frozen waters of Lake Sihl in Switzerland.
The gallery with all the winning photographs both in this and previous editions can be seen online by visiting www.cvcephoto.com
Collaboration agreement with EITB Media
CVCEPHOTO and the Basque news group EITB Media have established a sponsorship contract through which the sponsoring entity will show the finalist photographs in the Weather Forecast news program section of ETB and at www.eitb.eus/eguraldia, between October 16th and 20th.
In addition, the audience of eitb.eus will choose the best photo among those published, which will receive the PUBLIC’s PRIZE awarded by EITB during the awards ceremony on October 21st.
Exhibition on the Boulevard and ceremony at San Sebastian’s Aquarium
The twenty winning photographs will be exhibited in large format in the gardens of San Sebastian’s Boulevard starting on October 20, preceding the CVCEPHOTO 2023 awards ceremony, which will be held for the first time at the San Sebastian Aquarium on Saturday 21st of October, at 6:00 p.m. This event will include the participation of the winners and, in addition to the winning photos and the finalists, attendees will be able to enjoy the screening of a documentary film related to photography.
The room exhibition, in high-quality prints, will be hosted at the headquarters of the Club Vasco de Camping Elkartea in San Sebastian from September 15th to November 24th, date after which the exposition will begin its tour. The outdoors exhibition of the Boulevard will remain installed until November 13th.
"TOPO photographic meetings" workshop
Prior to the awards ceremony, in the morning, a new edition of the “TOPO Photographic meetings” workshop will be held at the headquarters of the Club Vasco de Camping Elkartea, in which the visiting award-winning photographers will talk about their work. Admission will be free, prior registration in the CVCE office. This workshop is sponsored by Eusko Trenbide Sareak, an entity that has collaborated and sponsored CVCEPHOTO since 2018.
The organization of CVCEPHOTO hereby announces the upcoming edition the contest, which will accept registrations from January 1st, 2023, until March 31st, 2023. The complete contest rules are now available through the official CVCEPHOTO website, on the rules section (or click here for direct download). Below is a summary of the contest rules:
Registration:
Opening: January 1st, 2023
Deadline: March 31st, 2023
Entry fee: FREE
Prizes:
1st award: 1400€ + Exclusive and unique trophy created by Iñigo Arístegui artist
2nd award: 700€
3rd award: 300€
17 honorable mentions: diplomas
Special “BBK MENDI FILM BILBAO-BIZKAIA Poster” price: 700€ and BBK MENDI FILM poster
Special "Festival International du Film Alpin des Diablerets (FIFAD) Poster" prize: 700€ and FIFAD poster
(all cash prizes will be subject to the corresponding retention according the law)
Theme/categories: “MOUNTAIN ACTIVITY”: Any image related to sport activities (non-motorized) that take place on mountains. For instance: alpinism, climbing, ski, trekking, speleology, paragliding...
Eligibility: Open to all amateur or professional photographers of any age or nationality.
Registration requirements:
Registration and submission of photos must be exclusively done through the official website’s ENTRY FORM (available from January 1st to March 31st, 2023).
Each participant may submit a maximum of 3 photographs.
All finalists will be requested RAW format files of their photos.
Works must be submitted in JPEG format, with at least 1.600 pixels wide (for landscape format) or 1.200 pixels wide (for portrait format), converted to sRGB color space (profile being embedded in the file).
Max file size: 2 megabytes.
About the contest
CVCEPHOTO is the International Mountain Activity Photo Contest organized by the mountaineering association Club Vasco de Camping Elkartea from San Sebastian (Spain).
The goal of the CVCEPHOTO contest is to promote mountain activities through photography, serving also as a meeting point and promotion of the authors. It counts with the collaboration of the Bilbao Mendi Film Festival, a mountain film contest attached to the International Alliance for Mountain Film. The CVCEPHOTO contest values, in addition to the creativity and aesthetic quality of the works, the value of the activity reflected in them, counting for it with a jury formed by mountain photographers, as well as expert mountaineers.
Club Vasco de Camping Elkartea is a non-profit organization with over 4000 associates. It was declared a "Public Interest Entity" by the Basque Government in 2011 and all its management and workforce are based on voluntary work by its members. Following the same principles, the contest is therefore also non-profit and is only made possible thanks to the combined work of all the volunteer members.
Following the guidelines that encourage our organization, participation in the contest is free and open to everyone, regardless of participant age or nationality.
Contact us with any questions at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
San Sebastian, May 15th, 2021. For the seventh consecutive year, the Club Vasco de Camping Elkartea has held its international mountain activity photography contest CVCEPHOTO. This has been the edition of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has meant, in addition to other much more serious damages in society, a limitation of mobility for photographers in this discipline. Despite this, and although participant quantity has decreased, the quality of the images submitted to the contest has once again been outstanding. We want to thank all the participating photographers. Without their support for the contest, nor their tenacity in the pursuit of those beautiful images and their creativity, an event like this would never be possible.
From these lines, we also want to pay tribute to three of those CVCEPHOTO participants –our friends even, after several editions–, who we lost in that fateful 2020. In addition to the memory of their undeniable human stature, they have also left us with their artistic legacy: their unmistakable and personal look–always from the front line–, to a wild and powerful nature, sometimes overwhelmingly powerful. Our memory, always, with Paulo Garikano, Ralf Gantzhorn and Tontxu González. Without them, CVCEPHOTO would never have become what it is.
The seventh edition of CVCEPHOTO has brought together the work of 372 authors from 58 countries, who have submitted a total of 952 photographs.
The winner has been Marcin Ciepielewski (Poland), for his photograph "The X", the second prize went to Alex Buisse (France), for "Moulin", and the third prize went to Alessandro Cantarelli (Italy) for the photo "Lavaredo's Gloria".
As usual, the contest has also awarded the prizes of the two partnering mountain film festivals: the BBK Mendi Film Bilbao-Bizkaia prize, awarded to the Czech photographer Jan Zahula, for the photo “The Edge of Guillotine”; and the FIFAD prize (Festival International du Film Alpin Des Diablerets), which has been awarded to the Australian photographer Simon Carter for the photograph "".
In addition, 15 Honorable Mentions have been awarded to: Alex Buisse (France); Christian Pondella (California, USA); Christoph Jorda (Germany); Klaus Fengler (Germany); Lachlan Gardiner (Australia); Piotrek Deska (Poland); Rainer Eder (Austria); Ricardo Alves (Portugal) and the Spanish Pablo Pérez, Michael Helsing, Juan Montero, Jose Allende, Javier Urbón, Carlos de Cos and Diego Caballero.
The awards ceremony will be held on May 29 at 6:00 p.m. CEST (Central European Summer Time) (UTC/GMT+2h) at the Teatro Principal in San Sebastián, in an event open to the public, with reduced capacity, in which we will be able to enjoy a documentary about the work of one of the awarded authors, Rainer Eder, together with him, as well as with the winner Marcin Ciepielewski and other winners. That day, in the morning, all of them will join us in a new edition of the “Euskotren Photography Encounters”, where they will share their work with the public, subject to prior reservation at the Basque Camping Club. The awarded photographs will be exhibited in the CVCE club’s showroom from May 27 to July 31. We will also enjoy the outdoor exhibition of this year’s 20 impressive images in 2x2m format on the Boulevard, from May 27 until June 20.
1st Prize: "The X" by Marcin Ciepielewski
2nd Prize: "Moulin" by Alex Buisse
3rd Prize: "Lavaredo's Gloria" by Alessandro Cantarelli
We end the year of our 5th edition with great news, the incorporation of the "Festival International du Film Alpin Des Diablerets (FIFAD)", a prestigious Swiss mountain film event, with 50 editions at its back and member of the International Alliance for Mountain Film, as a collaborating partner of CVCEPHOTO.
As a result of our agreement, a new award has been established within CVCEPHOTO this year: the "FIFAD Poster Award".
You can find all details in the competition rules for this edition, available on our website since January 1st 2020.
This is another step forward in the dissemination of the photographic work of our contestants and a new door that opens towards making CVCEPHOTO an even more international competition.
The registration period is open until March 31st!
Here's the teaser trailer for last year's 2019 edition of the FIFAD!
