Winners announced in Dublin

Written on Tuesday 31.08.2010 23:00 PM By: Red Bull Illume

The world’s best action and adventure sports photographers were revealed tonight at a spectacular unveiling in Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. A stunning landscape-style surf photo by Chris Burkard (USA) wowed the international jury and was selected as the overall winner of Red Bull Illume 2010.

“I am so blessed,” said Burkard on picking up the biggest prize in freesports photography. “I feel really, really lucky just to be here and be surrounded by people I look up to and my peers. There’s something to be said to win an award in front of people you respect. So for me this is huge, a really huge honour. I’m really grateful.”

“As action sports photographers, we’re used to getting towards the action and getting close to it. And nine times out of ten, that’s what we’ll do. But I decided to get as far from the action as I could so I could show the whole landscape so people could appreciate everything that was going on and not just the surfer.”

Burkard’s image proved to be a hugely popular choice with fellow photographers and the public on the night. “The overall winning shot by Chris Burkard is amazing,” said New Creativity finalist Silvano Zeiter. “When I saw the random pictures exhibited on the Red Bull Illume website, I looked through them and saw that one picture by Chris Burkard. I made a screen shot and said to my friend, ‘This is going to be shot!’”

Fred Montagne, the previous winner of the Image Quest in 2007 also thought Burkard was a worthy winner. “My favorite photo was the overall winner by Chris Burkard, really. I like these kind of photos where you see the athlete in a big environment. It’s not just about the action, it’s about the action in some crazy environment. I like when the individual is really small. It would still be a good photo without the surfer.”

See the full list of category winners and finalists here on www.redbullillume.com.