22 Competition
Photography News Issue 23 absolutephoto.com
Exhibition TheMasters The Hasselblad Masters is the competition every pro photographer wants their name associated with. In the final stages of judging for the biennial competition we catch up with global marketing director Michele Channer to find out more
Interview by Megan Croft
What was the motivation behind establishing the Hasselblad Masters competition? The Hasselblad Masters was originally a marketing campaign devised by the corporate marketing department more than 20 years ago, whereby 12 photographers were chosen to be represented in a Hasselblad calendar. In 2001, the scheme evolved to become a competition, broadening the appeal to not only Hasselblad photographers but all professional and young, ambitious and aspirational photographers across the world. What’s your involvement in the competition? As the global marketing director for Hasselblad, I have a general overview of the competition, and it is great to see all the entries coming in and the fantastic level of work photographers are creating. One of the categories, Project//21, is open to all amateur photographers, students, assistants and young professionals making it a very exciting genre and one that I look forward to seeing the entries from. How has the competition grown over the years? The competition is proving to be increasingly popular each year, and this year despite only having ten categories instead of the previous 12, we received approximately 12,000 entries, which is our new record. Considering the proliferation of photo competitions at the moment, what do you think makes the Hasselblad Masters a worthy competition to enter? Hasselblad is a highly respected brand within the photographic industry, standing for high quality and professionalism, and generally photographers love to be associated with the brand, whether or not they own a Hasselblad camera. The Hasselblad Masters is one of the opportunities photographers have to engage with Hasselblad and to be successful in the competition carries a certain amount of notability for them and their careers. What’s been the most memorable year of the competition? 2008 saw the transition away from Hasselblad-chosen photographers to a competition open to all photographers, giving us a format
outstanding standard of images or attracts the most entries? Categories such as Fashion/Beauty, Portraits and Landscape always attract the majority of the entries due to them being popular genres of photography, but also genres that are usually associated with professional shooters. What’s the reason behind asking photographers to enter three images into any one category? Again, to help keep the competition fresh from year to year, it is good to mix up the format of the competition from time to time and this year we decided to up the stakes a little and have the competition judged as single images. This meant that the photographers now had to try and showcase their talent in just one image, so we decided to allow each photographer the opportunity to submit a shortlist of three images for
similar to what we have today. This was a key year for the competition, with photographers competing to become a Hasselblad Master in ten categories covering different photographic genres. The competition has changed up a bit for 2016, including adding a new Street/Urban category. Why did you feel the competitionwould benefit from this new addition? We like to try and keep the competition fresh from year to year and Street/Urban is a genre that is quite trendy within the industry at the moment, whilst also considering that our H5D-50c CMOS sensor camera, with its flexible ISO performance, is well suited to shooting street/urban images. There are ten categories in total now, is there any one that always draws in a particularly
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