Dubai: Photographers and artists may start sending their entries for the Hamdan Bin Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum International Photography Award (HIPA) for a chance to win a grand prize of US$120,000 (Dh440,400).
Now in its seventh season of competition, HIPA features four main categories with ‘The Moment’ as the main theme, ‘General’ and ‘Portfolio’ as two other categories. The fourth category, ‘Time-lapse’, will be dedicated to video, which is set to be offered by HIPA for the first time in its history.
The ‘Time-lapse’ category will allow visual artists to take part in the competition with short videos that will need to meet various technical specifications and rules.
Organisers on Tuesday also announced the Grand Prize Award for the seventh season of $120,000. This prize money will not be limited to submissions in the main theme ‘The Moment’ but will be awarded to any submission that takes part in the season’s competition.
Ali Bin Thalith, secretary-general of HIPA, said the competition aims to encourage the spread of the culture of photography.
“Through a directive from Shaikh Hamdan Bin Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and patron of HIPA, we today announce the opening of submissions for the seventh season of competition which will be themed ‘The Moment’. His Highness stressed the importance of spreading the culture of photography and the arts to the rest of the world through HIPA, and we aim to continue to do that in the coming season,” he said.
Bin Thalith explained that the new category, ‘Time-lapse’, is aimed at expanding the competition’s reach within the arts community.
“Through the launch of the ‘Time-lapse’ category, we have set out a huge challenge to all creative visual artists, and not only photographers, to take part in our seventh season of competition,” he said.
“Through this unique opportunity, we will connect with a larger group of talented creative artists. Likewise, the move to open our Grand Prize Award to any submission in the seventh season of competition will no doubt increase competition among photographers taking part and push them to submit their best photographs in any category they enter.”
Different categories
The ‘Portfolio’ category will allow photographers the chance to showcase their storytelling skills through a series of related photographic submissions. The ‘General’ category is also open for submissions to photographers this season, and will once again have two sub-categories for black and white, and coloured submissions.
Two special awards
The organisers introduced two new special awards to add to the existing ‘Photography Appreciation Award’. These are the ‘Photography Content Creator Award’ for a person or publication that has positively impacted the art of photography through promotion, publishing of content or invention of related photographic technology, and the ‘Emerging Person/Organisation in Photography Award’ for an emerging person or organisation that has shown outstanding work or vision in the photography industry on a regional, national or international level.
Submissions for HIPA’s seventh season can now be made on the official website, www.HIPA.ae. The deadline for submissions will be October 31, at 11.59pm (UAE time).
