At midnight on 3 April, the IV Most Beautiful Country photo contest closed for submissions.
For five months photographers from Russian and other countries had submitted their pictures to the website of the contest. More than 45, 000 images were submitted.
The “Most Beautiful Country” is an annual event, a large-scale media project of the Russian Geographical Society aimed at preserving the nature of Russia and promoting an attitude of care towards the environment. It was first held in 2015. And it has become annual since 2016. There are neither age nor location limits to enter the contest. The main condition is that photos submitted to the contest should have been taken in the territory of Russia.
In 2018 the jury is made up of: President of the Russian Geographical Society Sergey Shoygu, producer, film director, director general of Pervy Kanal TV Channel Konstantin Ernst, film director and screenwriter Andrey Konchalovsky, Russian art expert, director of the Tretyakov Gallery Zelfira Tregulova, artist and sculptor Dashi Namdakov, photographers Ivan Kurinnoy, Denis Budkovan and Andrey Narchuk. The chairman of the jury is Sergey Gorshkov, a famous wildlife photographer.
At the first stage works will be reviewed by independent experts, including professional photographers and heads of photo services of the Russian leading news agencies.
Following a jury session, the work of the finalists will be published on the website. It would be the start of a public voting; during this period every visitor to the website of the contest will be able to select photos he likes. A picture that will get the largest number of votes will win Audience Choice Award, and its author will receive the same prize like winners of other contest categories.
This year we have two new categories: Russia in Persons and Those Funny Animals. There are also categories well known to the public such as, Small Indigenous Peoples of Russia, Landscape, Wild animals, Russia in the bird's eye view, Caves, Cultural heritage, Birds, Underwater world, and others.
We would like to remind you that works will be selected anonymously: neither experts nor jury members will see names of authors.
We’d like to thank all participants in the context and wish them success!