Over 4,700 entries for Ramnath Goenka India Press Photo Awards

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Mumbai, Aug 8: Noted photographers Pablo Bartholomew, Prashant Panjiar and Devika Singh sifted through over 4,700 entries from across India over the last week to select the winning shots for the Ramnath Goenka India Press Photo Awards 2005, to be announced in September.

Over 218 lensmen from across India had sent the best photographs clicked by them between October 1, 2004, and December 31, 2005, for the nation’s biggest photo award contest, initiated by The Indian Express Group and now in its second year.

The competition has several categories ranging from spot news to sport, from art and entertainment to personalities, and nature and environment.

From the pool of entries, the judges debated long and hard to select the Ramnath Goenka Picture of the Year 2005 award, which, as per competition guidelines, goes to the picture that demonstrates an outstanding level of visual creativity and journalistic skill. The winner will receive a cash prize of Rs 1 lakh.

Prashnat Panjiar, who works for Time magazine and runs his own photo agency, said, ‘‘The number of entries has gone up dramatically this year, as is bound to happen with the contest getting more popular. But I think the bar hasn’t significantly risen.’’

The judges were disappointed that the photographs of Mumbai’s 26/7 floods did not match the better entries. Pablo Bartholomew, whose photographs of Bhopal’s gas tragedy made him the first Indian to win the World Press Photo of the Year Award in 1985, said, ‘‘We go strictly by merit. If there aren’t any award-winning shots in a particular category, we would rather not hand it out.’’

The judges went through every image — subjects ranged from the strife in Kashmir to people hit by the tsunami in 2004 to newsmakers like Amitabh Bachchan and Bal Thackeray — narrowing down selections through various rounds.

Captions sent in by the entrants were provided to the jury only in the final round, and the photographers behind the work were anonymous all through the selection. The strongest debates revolved around the selection of the ‘Photograph of the Year’. Devika Singh, who heads a Delhi-based photo agency, said that aspiring entrants need to pay attention to the rules carefully. ‘‘I think as the contest evolves, we must also introduce a category along the lines of Cultural Affairs since several entries are in that realm.’’