TIPA WORLD AWARDS 2021

Jul 05, 2021 22 minutes

he annual gathering of TIPA editors – somewhere in the world – was undoubtedly one of the highlights of the year. A chance to get together with a bunch of like-minded people doing the same job – a fairly specialised one it has to be said – and so facing the same challenges, issues and concerns. It was also a chance to take the pulse of the photography business globally and also that of magazine publishing around the world… both having undergone significant changes over the last decade or so. I, for one, always found these gatherings immensely valuable – validating some ideas and opinions, modifying others and, in some cases, perhaps prompting a rethink. Three days of eating, drinking, and sleeping photography magazines always served as a recharge of the creative batteries, a rekindling of enthusiasm and a re-affirmation of why we do what we do.

Then along came Covid-19 and the on-going cessation of international travel, relegating meetings and conferences all over the world to the laptop or tablet, and the largely unsatisfactory and unfulfilling experience of communicating via video streaming. Look, it’s better than nothing, but it’s a very poor substitute for the real thing, being constrained by time and the limited scope for conversations involving more than two people at a time. Zoom and the like really is social distancing taken to extremes – literally – but the show must on so, for the second year, the judging of the TIPA World Awards was conducted online.

Because of the logistics of online voting, it again fell to the TIPA Technical Committee – this is my second year as a member – to come up with a more refined list of categories and candidates than would usually be the case. Essentially we look at everything that’s launched within the period of eligibility, come up with a long list – and it is a long list – that then gets whittled down to a shortlist and then to an even shorter list. There is, of course, much debate along the way which, for the last two years, has been conducted via emails and Zoom meetings… a bit easier to conduct with a committee of six than the full complement of 26 TIPA members. Nevertheless, in the end, everybody gets to have their say, which is why winning a TIPA World Award is quite an achievement – you need to impress a lot of hard-nosed photo magazine editors who’ve seen it all.

Despite the ongoing issues with the Covid-19 pandemic around the world, there were still plenty of new imaging products to consider and quite a number of categories were very hotly contested. Not surprisingly, this includes those for lenses and the higher-end mirrorless cameras, but also photo/video monitors, which has become a very important market sector of late. Given the steady decline in new DSLRs, the TIPA World Awards no longer differentiates between reflex and mirrorless designs and instead now concentrates on sensor size, which is much more of a key consideration for new camera buyers today.

What was also evident is how much clever stuff is still being thought up to help us take better photos or make better videos. The area of lens design is a standout – not that the mirrorless camera configuration gives optical designers more freedom – but also accessories, software, and support hardware such as laptops (a new TIPA World Awards category for this year). In all, it’s very encouraging, which is just what we need right now.