The voting has closed and the ballots have been counted… The runaway winner of the People’s Choice Award is Sterling Lorence’s black & white shot of mountain-biker Matt Hunter.
“It is a huge honor to have been selected by the general public as their favorite overall image,” says Lorence.
“The Red Bull Illume contest is the pinnacle contest in the action sports world of photography and it was a huge accomplishment for me to have simply made it into the top 50. By winning the people's choice, it is the cherry on top, and truly makes me feel even more stoked about this image.”
Lorence likes to work closely with the athletes and keep them in on the creative process. When planning the shot, they knew they had the location, light and composition dialed. “All that was left was nailing the style of his air as Hunter wrapped past those trees. When this frame happened in the shoot, we both looked into the camera and knew we had the style and feeling we were searching to deliver,” says Lorence.
The People’s choice award is the most popular image from the top 50 as voted by the public. All voting took place on redbullillume.com and Lorence’s shot from the Illumination category secured the winning prize – a bumper pack from Sandisk (9x 16GB flashdisks, 3x 32GB, a Sandisk Extreme FireWire Reader and an ImageMate All-in-One USB Reader/Writer).