POYi stands for Pictures of the Year International (POYi), some hail it as “the oldest and most prestigious photojournalism competition in the world” and a series entitled “A Grunt’s Life” shot with the Hipstamatic app has won an award.
New York Times photographer Damon Winter has won 3rd place in the Newspaper Feature Picture Story category of the annual POYi contest.
You can view the entire series on the POYi site, along with the other winners. The photos were shot in northern Afghanistan with First Battalion, 87th Infantry of the 10th Mountain Division.
Winter did have more traditional photographic kit with him, but he found the casual nature of the iPhone suited the subject matter and he felt his subjects were more comfortable than if he was wielding a more noticable SLR.
The photos were fetaured on the cover of the New York Times (source), and you can read the story they accompanied on the NYTimes site.
Not everyone is happy that such an award was given to a series shot with the Hipstamatic app, one photographer feels that the nature of the Hipstamatic filters means that the image is changed beyond what one should refer to as photojournalism.
If you are not familiar with the Hipstamatic app, you might like to read my post on Hipstamatic and Instagram.
What do you think? Photojournalism, art or just some iPhone pics…?
