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The Canon 2012 Dynamic World Photo & Video Contest Winners have been announced.

The winners of the Canon Dynamic World 2012  photo & video contest have been announced. The judges did a tremendous job in combing through thousands of images to select a country winner for the photos submitted and in the case of video selecting the top three videos amongst all the submissions.

A big congratulations to the winners in particular, Shiv Mandavia for winning the grand prize of a Canon 7D
with his fabulous photo taken in Kenya below.

Shiv explains the story behind his image: 

"This  image  tells  a  story  of  a  native from the  Masai who live on the slopes of the magnificent  Mt  Kilimanjaro portraying the strength of  an  African  woman  who   walks  into  a  dust  storm  to  protect  her   children.  I  saw  this  breathtaking  scene  while  I   went  to  visit  my  elegant  Masai   friends  in  Amboseli,  Kenya and just  as  the   dust  storm  started  to  gather,  I  ran  into   the  storm  blindly  wondering  what  she   was  up  to, only  to  realise  she  went  to  fetch   her  children  and  protect  them  from   the  storm."

Shiv shot the image with the Canon 5D MK II and a 24-105mm lens - the EXIF data settings for anyone that is interested is F20 at 1/80th of a second at ISO 250 and was shot on a focal length of 99mm.

You can see more of Shiv's work on his website. 

Here are some of the other winners:

Closer to home is this excellent capture of a motocross racer here in Dubai by amateur photographer, Sanjay Pradhan who caught the photography bug a year and a half ago after taking a couple of beginners workshops at GPP. He's made a quick progression as is evident from this photo that won him the grand prize in the UAE which had some excellent entries. See more of Sanjay's photos here.

This image below from Saudi Arabia by Abdulmajeed Aljuhani was a close contender in the reckoning for Grand Prize and for good reason. It's a very compelling picture and AbdulMajeed explains the story behind the shot. He woke up early to shoot the annual camera races in his hometown in Yanbu and at the start of the race, he anticipated the frenetic nature of the moment where the camels are pushed to get them on their way and in this particular instance, one of the camel fell down and in the melee that ensued, other camels followed suit and fell. He shot this with his Canon 5D Mark II and with a 24-105mm lens.

This image below by photographer Alaa Elbasha was another excellent effort and earned Alaa the Egypt winner's medal and is a very artistic interpretation of the dynamic changes taking place in Egypt currently. Alaa shooting with his NIKON D80 shot multiple exposures during a protest at around 5pm in Sidi Gaber, Alexandria and brought the images together in post to create the effect.

The video submissions were also excellent and the grand winner of the video category was Noushad P who captured the sights,  sounds and people of the Dubai Creek on a Canon 5D Mark II. Take a few minutes to see at the video  - its well worth it and hopefully will provide an inspiration to you to create your own video story: 

To see the entire list of winners of the contest, visit the  Canon Dynamic World 2012 site.  

A big congratulations again to all the winners and the participants for their passion to shoot, make pictures and videos and tell stories with them.