The voting, the results of which will determine the winner of the People’s Choice Award, began on the official website of the photo contest of the Russian Geographical Society "The Most Beautiful Country" on May 23, 2022. It will be possible to choose the best picture from among the finalists until June 6, 2022, inclusive. The Jury will name the winner in June 2022.
To participate in the voting, it is enough to have an account on the social networks VKontakte and Odnoklassniki or on the websites Mail.ru and Yandex.ru. The contest photos are presented on a special page of "The Most Beautiful Country" website. These works were selected by the members of the Expert Commission at an in-person meeting on April 27, 2022, from 46,893 images from 5,934 authors, including 669 from children.
Among the finalists there are ten photos in each of the categories of the main competition and five in each of the categories of "The Most Beautiful Country through the Eyes of Children". In the "Live Archive" there are two photos – archival and modern. The selection of images was anonymous; the members of the Expert Commission did not know the names or surnames of the photographers.
You can choose any number of photos you like, but you can only give one vote to each picture. Any way of artificially generating fake votes is prohibited, but finalists have the right to campaign for their work. The date of the jury meeting, at which the winner of the People’s Choice Award will be named, will be announced additionally.
In 2022, the participants of "The Most Beautiful Country" will compete in ten categories for adults: "Landscape", "Wild Animals", "Birds", "Russia from a Bird's Eye View", "Art of Wildlife (fine-art photography)", "Faces of Russia", "Macroworld", "Underwater World", "Live Archive", and "Elemental Magic"; and in four categories for children: "Landscape", "Animal World", "The World from a Bird's Eye View", and "Natural Phenomena".
In addition, there will be a winner of the special prize "Reserved Russia" from the partner of the contest – VTB Bank. It will be given to the author of the best shot taken in specially protected natural areas.
"The Most Beautiful Country" is one of the largest Russian photo contests, in which professionals and amateurs participate without age and place of residence restrictions. The only condition is that all the pictures must be taken on the territory of Russia.
For the first time, the competition was held in 2015 and immediately attracted the attention of the public. In eight years, the Russian Geographical Society has received 622,000 works from 36,779 authors.
The main prize in each category for adults is 250,000 rubles. The winners in the children's categories will receive quadcopters. The winners of the special prizes "Reserved Russia" and "People’s Choice Award" will receive an incentive in the amount of 100,000 rubles. The finalists' works will take part in photo exhibitions in Russia and abroad.