We’ve now seen two month of entries to the American Photography Open 2022 competition, and it already looks like this may be one of our biggest years yet. Today we feature three entries from April—an evocative glimpse of fisherman at work in rough seas off the coast of California, a dazzling shot of Comet NEOWISE, as seen just before dawn over the Arizona desert, and a studio portrait of a dancer framed by soft light.

The contest, as you may know, is open to photographers at any level using any device. There are a number of ways to win. In addition to the Open prizes, our partner SanDisk’s ”Share Your World” competition is once again open for entries. To enter the SanDisk competition, select the “Share Your World” category and follow the instructions there. The SanDisk entries will also be eligible for the Open prizes. You can enter both competitions as many times as you wish.

The Open Grand Prize winner will receive $5,000 and prizes from our partner sponsors. Our finalists will also receive prizes from our sponsors, including a Tamron 35mm F/2.8 Di III OSD (Model F053) for Sony mirrorless $249 value or $150 credit towards any Tamron lens purchase (Note: credit for USA residents only), a SanDisk 128GB Extreme Pro SD card and a PhotoShelter 1 year standard account.

Now’s the time for you to enter. The deadline is August 31, but why wait? Go here for more information on the prizes, judges, and information on how to enter. Meanwhile, check out the highlighted entries from April:
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Bill Ferris: “NEOWISE”

On March 27, 2020, astronomers working with the NEOWISE mission of the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer space telescope discovered an 18th-magnitude object, located some 160 million miles away from Earth. Four months later, Bill Ferris, a serious photography enthusiast based in Flagstaff, Arizona heard about the comet.

“It was forecast get pretty bright, so on the morning of of July 9, I made the 45-minute drive from my home to Mormon Lake Overlook to observe and photograph the comet,” says Ferris. “I chose this location because I had used the tree in the photo as a subject in a sunrise photo made several years before. I thought that if the comet was bright enough and could be framed with the tree, it would make a good image.” 

The comet was indeed bright—the brightest comet in the northern hemisphere, in fact, since Comet Hale–Bopp in 1997—and Ferris got his shot. “I made a few dozen exposures that morning as the comet rose higher and twilight brightened the eastern horizon,” he recalls. His favorite, above, was made at 4:02 a.m. with a Nikon D610 DSLR and a Tamron 70-200mm f/2.8 Di VC USD zoom lens. Exposure: 135mm at f/2.8; ISO 1600.

See more of Ferris’s work at Flickr and PhotoShelter.
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Jason Houston: “Last Day on the Water”

“Photography has literally always been part of my life,” says Jason Houston, a  professional photographer based in Boulder, Colorado. “I started in high school on the yearbook and newspaper. My first real magazine assignments came while I was in college, and I never looked back.”

For several years, Houston has been documenting the sustainable fishing industry on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the U.S., both as a personal project and as commissions from NGOs and magazines. In February of 2020, he was aboard a fishing boat captained by Dave Toriumi, who works with an organization called Real Good Fish in Moss Landing, California, near Monterey. Photographing Torimui in rough seas, Houston says, was a challenge.

“A commercial fishing boat is crowded, messy, and wet. On this last day out they were loading up and bringing home all the crab traps so the boat was fully loaded and extra crowded and wet,” he notes. He shot the photo above with a Fuji X-Pro3 with a Fujinon XF 16mm F1.4 R WR ((24mm full frame equivalent focal length).

See more of Houston’s work at Instagram.
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Rene Kuipers: “They’re Here”

Based in The Netherlands, Rene Kuiper’s focus in studio photography. “I mostly shoot portraits,” says Kuipers, who considers himself a serious photo enthusiast. “My interest in photography started when I was 16,” he says. “I then used an analog Minolta camera. Only years later in the digital era did I realize I really knew what I was doing.”

The portrait above was taken last August in Kuiper’s studio in Velsen-Noord, a village in the Dutch province of North Holland. The model is Rosita Limahelu, a dance teacher at a local school. “I asked her to model for me several times,” Kuipers says. “It’s always a pleasure working with her, and dancers in general—they have very good expressions most of the time!”

Kuipers’s goal was to capture Limahelu illuminated in soft light. “I like dark photography, but it can be difficult to create such an image and still be able to see details in the shadows. I just practice a lot, to make things perfect,” he says. He shot this portrait with a Canon 5D Mark III and a Sigma 85mm f/1.4 Iens.

See more of Kuipers’s work at Instagram.