Ground Level Photo Contest Winners
Thank you to all the photographers that shared their best photos shot at ground level in this photo contest. Shooting photos from ground level allow for an amazing world of opportunities in regards to composition, framing, and vantage point allowing for new creative ideas to flow. Give it a shot and get your pics ready for the next ground level photo contest.
A special thanks to our friends at SmugMug for making this photo contest possible. SmugMug makes it easy to safely store, share, and sell your photos online. Trusted by millions of passionate customers, the independent photo-sharing site offers ecommerce-enabled, social media integrated, fully-customizable photo websites with gorgeous galleries and easy to order prints and gifts.
We appreciate the collaboration of friend and professional photographer, Jessica Zollman, as the guest judge. Jessica, also known as "jayzombie," is a commercial photographer based out of Los Angeles. After serving as the Community Evangelist for Instagram for nearly two years, Jessica decided to shift her career path away from technology in order to persue her passion for photography full-time. During her tenure at Instagram she was the voice of the community in which she created the Weekend Hashtag Project and helped organize Worldwide InstaMeets.
"Something repeatedly pulled me me to this portrait and the longer I looked at it the more it began to reveal itself. To me, this isn’t just an interesting image of a beautiful woman resting on a bed of flowers, it’s a portrait of womanhood and, more importantly, motherhood. I absolutely love the fact that the maternal aspect is so subtly stated—only noticeable when you really look and see how her hand is placed slightly below her stomach—that if you didn’t look for it you could easily miss it. The bright colors of the sky and the flowers that surround the subject make her seem ethereal, and the perspective from within the bed of flowers makes it appear as if she’s laying in an endless meadow. That desire to come back and continue explore and learn more about the subject and the statement being made is what lead me to select Tammy’s photograph as the grand prize winner." - Jessica Zollman
"This photograph uses the low perspective in such a wonderfully surreal manner. The water creates a beautiful tunneling effect while the softer focus on the small rocks in the foreground allows the viewer to orient themselves by revealing that it is, in fact, just a reflection. I also really appreciate the fact that the water is so still that it creates a mirror-like and sharp reflection." - Jessica Zollman
"An absolutely wonderful moment captured of an interaction between animal and photographer. The timing on this image is absolutely my favorite aspect—even half a second later and it would have appeared as if the fox was standing still. The movement of the fox’s paw and the direct eye contact with the lens paired with the vibrant colors and the small reflection all come together in breathtaking harmony." - Jessica Zollman
