In the monthly competition, each photograph entered into one of the 25 categories is judged on its own merits alone and is not judged against the other entries. The judges award each photo a rating of either Gold, Highly Commended or No Award Given.

My photograph below was one of only 2 golds awarded in the Events category in January 2012 and one of only 44 golds awarded across all of the categories for the month. My photo is now in the running to be entered into the annual awards for 2012 that will be judged in January 2013.

A few details about the photograph:

The picture was taken at the Viking Moot Festival that takes place in Aarhus, Denmark each year. I have been going for the last 3 or 4 years and I knew that at the end of the mock battle, the vikings line up and charge towards the audience with weapons raised. I positioned myself in a strategic place and focused my 70 to 200 mm zoom lens on a small group of participants.

I was fortunate that the front viking has a real look of anger in his face with his eyes bulging, and all but one have their mouths open as they charge forwards.

Taken on my Canon 5D with 70-200mm zoom lens and 1.4x converter, the technical details are f5.6, 1/800 sec at ISO 400.

I carried out a little post-processing work in Photoshop, slightly cropping the original image and cleaning up a bit of the grass on the front right. I then added a light vignette around the edges and altered the colors to give more earthy tones.

Result

I’m looking forward to another shoot that we have arranged in the studio soon, but in the meantime, here are a selection of the photos from the session ….

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