Swarovski Optik Digiscoper of the Year Winners 2009

The Digiscoper of the Year competition has been run by Swarovski Optik since 2006 and the growth in the quality of the contributions from year to year has been astounding.

A stunning Great Crested Grebe by Manuel Esteban Ruiz
the quality and number of entries coming out of Spain this year was truly remarkable.
It seems the Spanish are really leading the way with digiscoping

... and Digiscoper of the Year 2010 was probably the most outstanding to date. There were literally hundreds of entries of which I thought: "wow, now that is a nice photo!"

Arctic Tern by Paco Ruiz - a great action shot

How were the winning digiscoping photos chosen? There were 8 regional competitions (1 each in UK, Germany, Belgium and Netherlands; and 4 in the USA: Birwatcher's Digest, BirdChick, Eastman's, and the Western Hunter) and an international Digiscoper of the Year competition, each with their own separate websites and juries. The winners from the regional competitions were awarded prizes and automatically added to the selection of images entered directly in to the International Digiscoper of the Year competition. The jury for the international competition (3 independent photo experts and 1 Swarovski Optik employee; 4 different countries) was then presented with all the international entries without prejudice or knowledge of which entries had won in the various regional competitions. The points awarded by the jury members were then tallied to determine the winners.

Snow Bunting by Peter Nilsson - exceptional use of exposure and lighting!

As I am sure you can imagine, judging photographs is incredibly difficult and in many ways personal. The entries this year were of an incredible standard with hundreds of images I really liked: showing off great composition, rare moments, action and artistic beauty. Digiscoping is really growing leaps and bounds both in the numbers of practitioners and in the skill level being shown and we (Swarovski Optik) will continue to try to find ways to support this development.

This year's Digiscoper of the Year will start in April 2010.

Happy digiscoping,
Dale Forbes