In the world of art, they say you never truly understand a subject until you get up close and personal with it. So close that every detail, flaw, crevice and colour presents itself in its most authentic, unfiltered form, adding a perspective that only proximity can bring. Now, you can also win an award for it, with the Close-up Photographer Of the Year (CUPOTY) awards.
Advertisement
CUPOTY celebrates the beauty of zooming in by highlighting the unconventional edge of close-ups, micro and macro photography of animals, insects, plants and fungi, landscapes and underwater scenes, among other categories.“A macro lens is like a portal to another world – even the most mundane subjects can be transformed into fascinating subject matter,” Tracy Calder, a co-founder of the awards, told VICE. “I’ve seen incredible pictures of slime moulds, glass bottles and human hair, for example. If you approach a subject with a sense of curiosity, then the ordinary can become the extraordinary.”This year, CUPOTY received over 9,000 entries from across 56 countries, with the winner taking home £2,500 along with a trophy and a dedicated page on the award’s official website. This year, photographer Pål Hermansen took home the prize as the overall winner for his stunning image of insects discovered in a defective lamp by the side of his house in Norway.
“I emptied the lamp and spread the contents onto a large light-table I had left over from my slide days,” Pål said in a press statement. “I wanted to express the chaos and diversity of this discovery, but also to find some kind of composition. To me, it’s a visual reminder of the important and extreme diversity of animals around us that we take for granted.”And if the creepy crawlies in the Insects category weren’t enough, photographer Juan J. González Ahumada’s image of a daddy-long-legs came out on top in the Animals category as well. “The backlight highlights the delicacy of the animal’s legs,” remarked Calder in a press release. “It’s a common subject, but captured in such a striking way that it feels positively celebratory.”
Advertisement
Meanwhile, in the Plants & Fungi category, photographer Barry Webb smoothly captured a rare Holly Parachute fungus in his garden, which became the subject for his prize-winning picture.
Irish photographer Daragh Muldowney’s chilling shot of a crack in the ice in Siberia’s Lake Baikal made a splash in the Intimate Landscape category.
In the Underwater category, photographer Alessandro Grasso managed to capture an octopus sheltering in a noble pen shell, an image that appears almost psychedelic as it pulls the viewer’s focus onto the details.
As with all things that take on even more meaning when magnified and studied, the CUPOTY awards teach us the importance of clarity, brevity, and how we can be transported into a different world with endless possibilities if we just took a moment to get closer.