Fifth Ring’s Gary McGovern has won the inaugural ‘Creatives Behind the Lens’ photography competition.
Organised by Corbis and arabianEye and open to all non-professional photographers working in creative industries across the Middle East, the competition, which originates in France, made its regional debut last month.
In second place was Samer Lahoud of Leo Burnett Dubai, followed by Rayyan Aoun of JWT Riyadh. The social media winner was Ashraf Majiet of Tonic. Judges for the event included Ali Ali, creative director at Elephant Cairo, Grey Dubai’s creative director Alisdair Miller, Seyoan Vela, ECD at JWT Dubai, Ramzy Haddad, ECD at Y&R MENA, and Benjamin Benser, director of creative photography at Corbis Europe.
“With over 200 entries, response to the contest was tremendous, with the quality of submissions proving that there really is a huge passion for photography in the region amongst creatives”, said Celia Peterson, partner at arabianEye.
Big “Thank You” to all participants of this year’s Creatives Behind the Lens photo competition and congrats to our grand winners!
arabianEye hopes next year’s edition will receive the same enthusiasm!
Special thanks to all our UAE and MENA judges:
UAE
Lucy Huggins – Photographers Agent, Magnet Photo Production
Ramzy Haddad – Executive Creative Director, Y&R MENA.
Paul Cardwell – Executive Creative Director, The Brand Union Dubai
Brian Kerrigan – Photo Editor of The National, Abu Dhabi Media
MENA
Nicolas Geahchan – Executive Creative Director, JWT MENA
Feras Shoujah – Associate Creative Director, Leo Burnett Saudi (Riyadh)
Firas Hamdan – Creative Director, Fortune Promoseven Qatar
Love the lighting! You’re quite the creative Gary. How did you do that?
A big thank you to arabianEye and Corbis for staging and organising a much needed competition for creatives in the MENA region.
The winning image ‘Night Hawkers’ was taken on the Malaysian island of Penang. It’s a ‘Hawker’s Paradise’ and offers some of the best street food experiences in the world. Its people embrace, cultivate, and take great pride in Penang’s unique street food culture and living traditions.