All the winners revealed - Australia's Top Emerging Photographers 2016

The best emerging talent

Capture's eighth annual Australia's Top Emerging Photographers awards showcases the very best emerging photographic talent, as judged by 51 distinguished professionals from Australia and abroad. The awards recognise, encourage and promote talented photographers in the early stages of their photographic careers. In 2016, the competition attracted 962 entries across the nine categories, comprising 5,772 images – an increase in entries of almost 60% from last year.

How the competition works

To be a contender for the title of Australia’s Top Emerging Photographer 2016, photographers with less than four years’ full-time experience working as a professional photographer were invited to submit portfolios of six images across any of the nine categories. After an initial review of entries by the editor of Capture magazine, a shortlist was produced which was then voted on by the judges. Once categories winners were established, judges were then asked to rank their five favourite portfolios to determine an overall winner.

To our supporters and sponsors

Choosing the category winners is always a challenging task for our judges, and much thanks must go to the leading professional photographers for their time, wisdom and experience scrutinising the entries to help find the winners. Much thanks to our major sponsor, Fujifilm, and all our category sponsors, which included CATC Design School, EIZO, Goal Zero, Momento Pro, National Portrait Gallery, QNAP, Sally Brownbill, SUNSTUDIOS, and Think Tank Photo, for their immense generosity and commitment to supporting emerging photographic talent.

This year the total prize pool for Australia’s Top Emerging Photographers was worth over $21,000, with $11,715 in prizes, plus cash prizes of $9,500. The Emerging Photographer of the Year receives the grand prize – a Fujifilm X-T1 and XF 18-135mm lens valued at $2,599, plus $5,000. Category winners receive prizes from our category sponsors, plus $500.

To see all the winning images and invaluable judges’ comments on how to improve one's submission, grab a copy of the May/June issue. Full portfolios of the winners and runners-up, as well as an image from each of the finalists, appears in the iPad or Zinio edition.

More online

Keep up to date with the latest news from Capture via out fortnightly e-newsletter, connect with us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/capturemagazine or on Instagram @capture.mag. We'll also be sharing more of this amazing work on Instagram and Facebook.

In the coming month, we’ll also be sharing the list of Highly Commended and Commended entries, so stay tuned.