The above photo of a defiant Herring Gull braving a wave has won this years British Wildlife Photography Awards, netting photographer Steve Young the £5000 cash prize.

Judge Greg Armfield of the WWF commented,

This is a unique and striking image. One that captures perfectly the power, chaos and intensity of the ocean as it surrounds the majestic gull.

While judge Tom Hind of Getty Images is quoted as saying,

I like the defiance in this shot – the gull’s refusal to be moved in the face of this crashing wave seems to sum up a peculiarly British stoicism! It’s also a great example of how the commonplace can be transformed in a judicious moment.

Check out the winners of each individual category here.

Thanks to everyone who entered our giveaway for the accessory we launched earlier this week: the Photographers Rights Gray Card Set. We received 166 comment entries and 139 Twitter entries for 305 entries overall. Using random.org, the randomly selected winners are:

#156: Michelle

These would come in very handy- I’ve been harassed before.

#302: @mschicamae

Ooo Photographers Rights Gray Card Set http://j.mp/rightscards this will come in handy in sticky legal situations with your camera :).

#37: Kevin (@scoutdude)

That’s great! I would love a set of those! What a sweet idea!

Congratulations! Please email editor@petapixel.com to claim your prize.

Thanks to all of you who entered this giveaway. If you haven’t already, you can pick up the Photographers Rights Gray Card Set for $15 with free shipping in our newly launched store.

Thanks to everyone who participated in our giveaway on black friday. In response to the question “what are you most thankful for?”, we received 80 comments and 33 tweets for 113 entries total.

Here are the randomly selected winners:

The winner of a Trade Secret Card Pack:

#108: headedforhades (@headedforhades)

I’m thankful for Petapixel’s tweets! ;o)

The three winners of Digital Photography School‘s new book The Essential Guide to Portrait Photography:

#2: Corey Russell (@MeatJacket)

I’m pretty thankful for living in one of the nicest parts of Canada , wouldn’t wanna be anywhere else.

#107: thedudeabides67 (@thedudeabides67)

I am thankful for the rich colours of life.

#109: matiassingers (@matiassingers):

I am thankful for @punkpolkadots, @ashwinpande and all other friends who make the next day worth looking forward to

Congratulations! Please contact editor@petapixel.com to claim your prizes.

Thanks again to everyone who participated. We have some pretty massive giveaways lined up, so keep your eyes peeled!

Image credit: Giraffe kindergarten by Focx.

Our latest contest for five (5) Topaz Labs Photoshop Bundles has come to an end. We received about 187 entries via comments, 118 entries via Twitter, and 305 entries total. The question we asked for the contest was “What is your greatest fear?”. Here are the randomly selected winners:

#147: fathima_05

My biggest fear is marrying the wrong person and ending up unhappy with my life… it paralyzes me

#86: sesser (@sesser)

My biggest fear is fear itself… that and carnies (small hands, smell like cabbage).

#301: dsdphoto (@dsdphoto)

my greatest fear outside of photography, losing those I care about leading to eternal loneliness.

#11: Adam

That my photography will never be appreciated

#65: wideangle

Greatest fear is to lose the people I care the most about…

Congratulations! Please email editor@petapixel.com to claim your prize.

Thanks to everyone who participated in this giveaway. It’s always interesting to read through the responses we get. We hope to have another giveaway soon, so please keep your eyes peeled!

Image credit: How to Camouflage City Sites by Smotret.

Sorry for not picking and announcing the Noise Ninja giveaway winners last night as I said I would. I just moved back to Berkeley for graduate studies in CS, and my new place doesn’t have Internet yet. I finally got some Internet access now, sitting in the East Asian Library on campus:

So, the giveaway has ended, and we received a total of 95 comment entries and 67 entries through twitter for a total of 162 entries. The three numbers (and winners) that I randomly selected are:

#155: Bob Snyder (@fordan)

A Snow Leopard. I heard there’s a cool new operating system modeled after it!

#132: Joe Reding (@JoeReding)

If I could be any animal I wanted to be I would be an owl.

#110: Treasa Lynch (@treasa)

I’d like to be a bat, today, at least.

Congratulations! Please email editor@petapixel.com to claim your Noise Ninja license.

Thanks to everyone who participated! Also, I’ll be giving away something pretty awesome in the coming days to celebrate PetaPixel crossing the 10,000 follower mark on Twitter. Stay tuned!

Some other interesting responses we received:

ivoryhut (website)

I’d be a panda bear and pinch my own cheeks all day. I’d have to figure out how to work a camera remote, though, for all those pictures I’ll be wanting to take of myself. Before I go extinct.

micahtaylor (website)

For sure a Three-toed sloth. It’s like a Wookie in real life.

Rob Goldberg (@rob_goldberg)

If I could be an animal I would be an Organ Oak. Also known in some parts of the world as a Kangaroo (at least those parts of the world that don’t speak in anagrams).

Our giveaway for a free license to onOne Software’s Plug-In Suite 4.5 is now over. We received 93 entries total, with 59 through the comments and 34 through twitter. This is less than our previous ones, but is probably due to the fact that it was only open for four days instead of seven.

We were also intending to have all the tweet entries show up in the Reactions section below the comments, but we had a little trouble having all the tweets appear. We’ll have to iron this out for our next giveaway, but for this one we simply used a Twitter search to find all the tweet entries.

Anyhow… enough with the boring stuff. The randomly chosen winner of this giveaway is:

#61: vandymcnew (@vandymcnew)

Here’s his favorite experience:

My favorite photo experience was when I was in Australia. 2007 was a good year! :) Sydney, Cairns, Brisbane

Congratulations! Thanks for participating and sharing your favorite and most memorable photographic experiences with us! We’ll be posting another giveaway very soon, so stay tuned for more chances to win awesome photo stuff.

Here are some responses submitted by our readers:

Luc (twitter):

The top experience in my photographic adventures was the first time I taught pinhole photography to a class of children who lived under poverty. The spark in the kids’s eyes when they first saw the images come out of powdered milk cans with such a tiny hole on the walls, and the realization that beauty was present in the shanty towns they were living in, even though they had never noticed it was totally awesome. :D

olasis (flickr):

My most memorable photographic experience was hearing my first SLR’s shutter. I heard it and i was hooked to photos.

EmigrantMtChris:

It certainly wasn’t my favorite experience, but my most memorable was photographing our stillborn son. It was awful doing it, but I’m very thankful now that I did. It’s one of the few things we have to remember him by.

Adrian Park (twitter):

My most memorable photographic experience was a solo shoot on the Welsh Coast in December 2008. Personal tragedy earlier in the year had sent me into a spiral of depression I was desperate to escape. The weather that day matched my mood. I decided to go out and force myself to ‘see’ beauty. I was really happy with the results and that was a turning point in rebuilding my life. Photography is a great therapy!

This is what I found that day.

Chendur Venkatraman (twitter):

My most memorable moment was shooting for a school for Mentally Challenged Children in Hyderabad, India… Surrounded by 50 children who were in their own world…I was left wondering initially how i am going to shoot as spending time with those beautiful children brought tears to my eyes… The first visit inspired me to work with the school and raise few thousand dollars highlighting the school through photography….Now I visit the school few times a month and it has become a part of my life as i continue to work with them ….
Yamini Foundation for Mentally Challenged

janetmhug (twitter):

My most memorable photographic experiences was when I was getting ready for bed one evening in the winter and had to let my dog out, when I noticed a big “puff” sitting on one of the branches of my pine tree in the backyard. Being a birder, I grabbed my binoculars and found I had an Eastern Screech Owl hunting in my backyard. I retrieved my camera, put on a coat over my pajamas, barefeet in my boots trudging through deep snow and managed to spend 20 minutes photographing the owl on the backyard tree branch. An awesome experience due to the circumstances. The owl was extremely cooperative the entire time I was within 6 feet of the bird.

Eastern Screech Owl – Gray Phase, #9

A big thank you to everyone who participated in our latest giveaway and shared your favorite photographers with us. We received 191 comment and tweet entries this time (a new record!), and I’ll share the results of the question in a bit.

The winners of a free Photomatix Pro Plus license, chosen using a random number generator, are:

#9: Max Vernon (@max_vernon)

my favorite photographer: http://www.flickr.com/photos/muzzlehatch

#14: riNux (@riNux)

My Favorite Photographer is Joe McNally @JoeMcNallyPhoto http://portfolio.joemcnally.com/ #Petapixel #Photomatix

Congratulations! Please drop me an email at editor@petapixel.com to claim your prizes.

A big thank you to everyone who entered the giveaway, and to all our loyal readers! We have a lot more awesome stuff lined up to be given away, so be sure to check back soon!

Now, onto the results of the question, “Who is your favorite photographer?”. The top three responses we received were:

1. Ansel Adams (24 people)
2. Joe McNally (6 people)
3. Sam Javanrouh (4 people)

I never would have guessed that Ansel Adams would have been the overwhelming favorite, and found that pretty interesting.

A big thank you to everyone who entered our latest giveaway. The winner of the free QuikPod handheld tripod is:

#12: Patricia Reiser

Congratulations! I hope you enjoy your new accessory and put it to good use! Please send an email to editor@petapixel.com to claim your QuikPod.

We have many more giveaways planned, so please check back soon. Also, I’m definitely looking forward to Monday, when we’ll be hearing from David Nightingale of chromasia!

Have a great weekend!

The first PetaPixel giveaway has come to an end, and I’m definitely surprised by how many entries we received. We received 101 comment entries, and 76 entries through Twitter. To choose the winners, I used random.org to generate a random number between 1 and 177. Numbers 1-101 were comment entries, and 102-177 were Twitter entries.

Here are the winners:

#102: Frank DelValle (@frankdelvalle)

Canon EOS 1D Mark III

#84: Diana Pink (iamdianthus.com)

While I love my D80 with the 18-50mm 2.8 lens, it will never replace the 1970′s Minolta with 35mm lens I learned with.

#141: Chris Scott (@nzcjs):

Just starting HDR, see http://tinyurl.com/nhl4yg Favourite camera would have to be my Nikon D300. Do I win now ;-)

#140: Jon Krombein (@Krombein)

my favorite camera is the Canon 1Ds Mk3.

#79: Dustin Dodge (dustindodgephotography.com)

Camera: Canon 5D
Lens: 24-70mm 2.8L

#123: Donnita Mae (@DonnitaMae)

My favorite lens in the Canon 70-200 f2.8 IS.

#34: Robin (aroundtheisland.blogspot.com)

My only SLR is my Nikon D40 so I’ll go with that. It’s either that or the older than ancient Yashica I had as a teen many (far too many) years ago.

Congratulations to all the winners! Please send an email to editor@petapixel.com to claim your HDR PhotoStudio license.

If you didn’t win, don’t fret. I have some more giveaways planned for the near future, including more HDR software licenses!

Now, some interesting things I discovered through laboriously tabulating the entries by hand:

The most popular cameras were the Canon 5D Mark II with 12 entries, and the Nikon D90 with 10 entries.

The most popular lenses were the Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS with 8 entries, and the Nikon 50mm f/1.8D with 4 entries.

You can download the final tally here, though I’m not sure why you’d want to.

Thanks again to everyone who participated in this first giveaway. I definitely had a lot of fun reading through everyone’s favorite cameras and lenses, and am definitely looking forward to the next giveaway.

P.S. PetaPixel just broke the 1,000th follower mark on Twitter (@petapixel). Thanks everyone!