The Spirit of South Africa Photography Competition Winners
With the action in South Africa over it is time to announce the winners of our Spirit of South Africa competition. We have had over a thousand entries and the standard of photography has been excellent. You can check out all of the pictures over on the Flickr group here. Our Umbro photographer in South Africa, Stanley Lumax has judged the competition for us. Congratulations to Viv_Beat (picture above) who wins the opportunity to watch the England Team train and then be Umbro’s official photographer at Wembley for the England versus Bulgaria Euro qualifier with a brand new Sony NEX 5. Stanley has also selected 4 pictures as runners up who will receive some Umbro goodies. Here is what Stanley had to say:
There were a lot of great photos taken for this contest. What separated these five from the rest is the overall emotion and story-telling I felt when I saw them. Having actually taken a lot of these shots at the World Cup, I appreciate the process of looking for interesting shots, and actually positioning yourself at unique angles so that you don’t get the same shot that everyone else has. Even having your camera set and anticipating that someone will do something worth capturing. It is not as easy as it looks, and it is a tiresome process to do it for 90 minutes of a game. Everyone who participated should be congratulated.
I love the Cameroon pic by Vic_Beat because of the intensity and solitude depicted. The concentration in his face is as though he is on the field and ready to do battle.Most photos you see of fans with their faces painted are playful and happy. This one is intense.
This photo communicates the helplessness and faith of being a fan. Knowing that there is nothing you can do but believe in your team. Its definitely a religious experience.
The collective number of fans was quite impressive. Depending on what team you were cheering for, it could give you a feeling of invincibility or a feeling of enormous obstacles.
There was something interesting about seeing the diversity of fans supporting Ghana. Photos like this one help communicate to people who were not there that the reality is there is a variety of nationalities in Africa and the support of African countries as a whole was strong, no matter which country it was. A win was for the continent.
The Flags help give the World Cup color and energy. It helped strangers identify wether someone was a friend or foe, and gave a reason to strike up conversations with people no matter where they were from geographically.
