The Jury’s Favorites

2024 – The Year of Dreaming Big (and Almost Having a Nervous Breakdown)

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2024 arrived—the year of “dreaming big, then testing the limits of my sanity.”
So, in the spirit of reckless ambition, I uploaded around 20 photos to the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition in Hungary. My modest hope was that if a few of them made it past the first round of pre-selection (not with the lowest score, but at least somewhere in the middle of the pack), I’d already be happy.

And lo and behold: almost all of them advanced!

Even better, two of my photos received outstanding scores—one of them ranking as the third-highest in its category! I nearly fell off my chair… if I had been sitting. But I wasn’t. Because I was painting. A room, not a picture.

With the first round completed, I waited for the next one with cautious optimism and very low expectations. Naturally, fate had its own sense of humor and made sure that the second round of judging landed exactly on the second day of our vacation—our travel day, to be precise.

So, there I was, gripping the steering wheel somewhere in the middle of Germany, while my wife was following the results on her phone, and I was trying to breathe normally.

And then the news came.

A massive debate had erupted around my photo.

One of the judges was hell-bent on throwing my image out of the competition, going 6-to-1 against it. He didn’t explicitly say, “This is a piece of crap,” but let’s just say he used every other possible way to imply it. In his view, the photo deserved to be immediately removed, preferably burned, and its ashes scattered into the ocean.

At this point, I felt my stress levels spike to hazardous levels, and I made a decision: I would not deal with this until we arrived at the hotel, and I had a cold beer in my hand.

So, that’s exactly what I did.

By the time I had secured my life-saving beer, the debate was still raging on. The same judge had already persuaded two or three more people that my photo was nothing short of a visual crime and was just one step away from issuing an international arrest warrant against it.

And then, like a hero entering the saloon in a classic western movie, my savior arrived.

Tamás Vitray Jr.

He surveyed the battlefield, adjusted his stance, and dropped the bombshell question:

“Are we seriously considering throwing THIS picture out??”

A dramatic silence followed, which was then broken by Péter Fáth, who simply stated:

“We can’t do this to the public. These images deserve to be seen.”

At that moment, my blood pressure returned to human levels, my breathing became functional again, and I came to terms with the fact that one of my photos had made it into the exhibition.

But the story wasn’t over yet.

Weeks and months passed, and I slowly started recovering from the emotional rollercoaster of the jury process, when suddenly—like a bolt of lightning from a clear sky—another email arrived.

I had won an award.

But not just any award.

My photo had been chosen for the cover of the competition’s official book.

That was the moment when fate flipped a giant, grinning middle finger to the judge who had been so eager to banish my image into the depths of a digital dumpster.

Suddenly, all the struggles, all the frustrating moments, all the jury drama faded into insignificance.

Because if there was ever a moment to say “It was all worth it”—this was it. 😎

The Experimental Photographer – Or How I Almost Became a Scientist

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It was as if they had created this category just for me. If there’s one thing I truly excel at, it’s experimenting. Whether it’s with flashes, LED lights, or even a toilet paper roll repurposed as a DIY light modifier. Not to mention my extensive research in the field of alcohol-based experimentation—though those tests rarely concluded with publishable scientific results.

At first, my monthly submissions weren’t delivering the expected success. Each time I eagerly awaited the evaluations, only to realize that maybe this month wasn’t quite the one where I’d take the photography world by storm.

But then, around mid-year, something changed. My scores started climbing, and suddenly, I wasn’t just scraping by with “honorable mentions.” I was actually in the running for a podium finish.

Then came the final two months of submissions.

And I swept the competition.

Not by a little. By a lot. My scores skyrocketed, and I imagined the jury nodding in approval (at least, that’s how I pictured it). Before I knew it, it wasn’t about whether I’d make the top three, but rather about the fact that I had won the category.

First place. The champion of the Experimental Photographer category.

At that moment, as I stood there, processing it all, I realized that maybe—just maybe—there is a place in the photography world for someone who approaches everything with creativity and curiosity.

Or at the very least, for someone stubborn enough to keep trying.

So, can I call myself a scientist now? Probably not. But one thing is certain: the experiments will continue.

Maybe next time, I’ll enter a macro photography series featuring fröccs (Hungarian wine spritzer). Who’s in? 🍷😆

Bonus Thought:

As a nature photographer who usually shoots in solitude, accompanied only by a serpa (a.k.a. my wife) on seemingly endless quests, being called up a year later as a category winner felt surreal. But in that moment, I did feel like someone.

If no one else, at least like a real photographer. 😊📸

The two photos I attached also made it into the exhibition.

Spritz, Sweat, and a Little Surprise

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Life didn’t stop after Lowland. Well, at least not for me. For the snails, that was still debatable.

It was 2023, and while nothing was certain yet, one thing I did know: I had a pretty good chance of securing 3rd place in the international category of Varázslatos Magyarország (Magical Hungary). Of course, this wasn’t handed to me on a silver platter. It took long, sweaty battles, countless sleepless nights, and enough spritz (fröccs) consumption to make winemakers slightly concerned about their reserves.

But the important thing was—this one was in the bag.

Then, in February, the notification arrived: I had placed! What’s more, they asked for the EXIF data for my photo. Excellent! That could only mean one thing: I had definitely won something!

At moments like these, one starts imagining oneself among the greats, nodding humbly while sipping champagne, as the press lines up for interviews. (Or, more realistically, a relative asks, “So, does this mean you can finally buy that new lens?”)

But then came the surprise. Another notification.

I re-read it, thinking at first it must have been the aftereffects of all the spritz. I had also secured a podium spot in the Birds category!

I could have caught a bird with my bare hands out of sheer joy! But then I figured that might be pushing things a bit, so I settled for just standing there, struggling to process what had just happened.

For a moment, I felt like I had finally joined the ranks of the greats. But that feeling didn’t last long—mainly because no one called to inform me that I’d now have a say in the geopolitics of wildlife photography.

However, one thing was certain: that next spritz wasn’t going to drink itself. 😄 The two attached photos also made it into the exhibition—so now at least other people can stare at them too, instead of just me at home.

Hyperjump – The Snail That Moved Faster Than the Post

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The world is full of surprises. Take photo contests, for example. You enter your images, send them off with a casual shrug, and… nothing happens. Business as usual.

Then, out of nowhere—long after you’ve written it off as just another failed attempt—an email strikes like lightning from a clear sky:

“Congratulations! Your photo has placed in the Lowland Photo Contest!”

At this point, the human brain enters emergency mode. Because in today’s world, this can mean one of two things:

  1. I actually won something.
  2. Or a Nigerian prince wants to leave me his fortune… if I just send him a small processing fee first.

But this time, it was real. The Lowland jury had officially declared that my image wasn’t just another drop in the ocean of over 5,000 entries—it was one of the awarded ones! “Highly Commended.”

I was over the moon! Birds could have been caught with my bare hands. Snails too, though that would have been trickier… slimy, slippery little things.

The photo that won me this honor was called “Hyperjump.” A fitting name, considering the painstaking effort it took to convince a snail to move in the right direction for the perfect shot. I spent countless nights experimenting, testing, and searching for the right subject, only to realize that whenever I finally found the right angle, the snail would immediately start crawling in the wrong direction.

But at last, the image was captured. And if someone had told me at the start of my journey that my first big international success would come from a small, stubborn gastropod, well… I’d probably have bought them a beer for their sense of humor.

Then came the big moment—the contest book was published. I eagerly flipped through the pages to find my image, and that’s when I got hit with the next surprise: they had titled my photo “Turbo Snail.”

Turbo Snail.

The very same creature whose speed could be outpaced by a sleepy retirement home on a Sunday morning had now been reborn as an icon of velocity. But you know what? At that moment, I couldn’t have cared less.

Because the important thing was this: that stubborn snail and I had somehow bent time and space, and the Lowland jury had decided—this image deserved recognition.

Sure, the colors in the book weren’t exactly what I had submitted, but at that point, nothing else mattered. As I held that book in my hands, I felt just as proud as if I had won the overall category… or the Olympics.

And if one day a snail ever enters a Formula 1 race? You can bet I’ll be there in the front row, camera in hand. 😄