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Call it the Wow! factor. With thousands of entries from our readers all over the globe pouring in, it seemed hard to pick the winners of our 12th Annual International Picture Contest. Contributing Editor Bob Lazaroff vetted all the prints, slides, and digital files, sorting them into 10 categories and selecting finalists for the last round. Then, our editors chose the best of each list, plus a Grand Prize winner, without knowing who made them or how. In the end, it was easy—our awards went to the photos that made us say, “Wow!”
GRAND PRIZE
Bob Kim, 44, photographer, Federal Way, WA
 For our Grand Prize-winning photographer, the world is a wide place, both figuratively and photographically. Bob Kim’s inspiration in landscape photography belies the notion of capturing a single moment in time.
To create the magnificent pastel-inflected image that won our top honor this year, Kim spent seven days shooting more than 200 photographs of Hedrick Pond, Wyoming, from three different vantage points. Back home in his studio, he edited the number of shots down to 30, then spent more than a month of extensive layering, color correcting, dodging, burning, and masking with Adobe Photoshop 7.0 to come up with the final composite. The result, in a word: wondrous.
 In fact, so breathtaking were the five images Kim entered in our contest, we couldn’t resist including another here, as well. This dramatic seascape, taken on Cannon Beach, Oregon, is likewise a composite of 30 images taken over two weeks with the same technical set up. You can see more of Kim’s work showcased on his web site, www.bobkim.net.
Tech Info: Tripod-mounted Hasselblad 503CX; 80mm f/2.8 and 150mm f/3.2 Hasselblad lenses (with an 82A graduated ND filter). Various exposures between one and eight seconds. Film, Fujichrome Velvia. Images scanned with a Screen DS 8090 scanner and worked over extensively in Adobe Photoshop 7.0.
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