The photo contest «The most beautiful country» is dedicated to the wildlife of Russia conservation and education of careful attitude to the environment through the art of photography. The Russian Geographical Society has been willing to tell about the wild nature, history and culture of our country. The best writers, artists, journalists, and, of course, photographers have been involved to that. There are unique photo materials of the famous Ermakov, Nikolay Miklukho-Maklay, Gombozhab Tsibikov, etc. being preserved in the archive of the Society.
There have always been a lot of famous photo artists in the ranks of the Society at all the times: it is enough to remember Vladimir Sneiderov and Vasily Peskov. That is why the Russian Geographical Society just really had to launch its own photo contest, open for all who are interested. The contest started in June, 2015, and has become annual since 2016.
From the 18th of April till the 1st of August the works are being accepted, and after that there will be held the selective round of the contest, and the final is scheduled for September. The awarding ceremony of the winners of the contest will be held within the frames of the Award of the Russian Geographical Society in the end of 2016. Everyone may participate in the creative competition regardless of age and place of residence.
The jury of the contest will consist of the famous public figures, well-known photographers and artists, as it was last year. There are the President of the Russian geographical Society Sergey Shoygu, a famous Russian photographer of wild nature Sergey Gorshkov, also there are the Head of the Perviy channel Konstantin Ernst, the General Director of the Museums of the Moscow Kremlin Elena Gagarina, the film director Timur Bekmambetov and the first photo contest «the Most beautiful country» winner in the «Animals» nomination Ivan Kislov amongst the members of jury. The primary selection of works will be conducted by the independent expert commission, which consists of famous photo-editors, photographers and art critics.
The participants of «The most beautiful country» photo contest in the year of 2016 may provide their works for 13 nominations. The complete list of them you may find on the page of the website of the photo contest photo.rgo.ru. The winner in the one of nominations – «People`s choice award» - is being selected with the help of open online voting on the website of the project. The winners of the photo contest will be given money prize.
25 thousand people took part in the first photo contest «The most beautiful country», which was held in 2015. They were participants of the variety of counties who had sent about 200 thousand of works.
In addition to the Russians they were residents of Abkhazia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Great Britain, Germany, Greece, Denmark, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, Moldova, Pakistan, Poland, Serbia, USA, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Finland, France, Czech Republic , Estonia, Japan and other countries. The youngest participant of the contest was 4 years old, and the eldest was 98.