Vertical Magazine is delighted to announce that anesthesiology resident and mountain rescuer Maciej Mikiewicz has been named the winner of the 2018 Vertical Photo Contest. Now in its 10th year, the Vertical Photo Contest celebrates the very best in rotary-wing photography. This year, it drew over a thousand entries from amateur and professional photographers from around the world.
The winning photo shows the Tatra Mountain rescue service flying a rescue mission with a PZL W-3A Sokol on Rysy, the highest peak in Poland. Mikiewicz, from Zakopane, Poland, caught the aircraft holding a careful hover as the crew hoisted up an injured hiker, with a spectacular misty mountaintop in the background.
As the Grand Prize winner, Mikiewicz has won a Hamilton Khaki Aviation X-Wind Watch (worth US$1,850), and his winning photo appears on the cover of the December ’18/January ’19 issue of Vertical Magazine, which is now available to read online.
“Over the 10 years we’ve been holding the contest, it’s grown to become an annual celebration of the very best of helicopter photography,” said Vertical publisher Mike Reyno. “We’re proud to attract entries from an extremely broad pool of very talented photographers from around the globe. The standard of competition is always extremely high, so picking the winners is always a challenging job. Congratulations to Maciej and all our winners, and thanks to everyone who submitted entries for taking part.”
The competition had three categories for entries: Beauty, At Work, and Military.
The category winners were Adrian Bretscher (Beauty), Ben Grelier (At Work), and Jesus Angel Lopez Granja. They have each won $750 for their winning photos.
The runners up were York Galland (second place, Beauty), Kim Flament (third place, Beauty), Przemyslaw Piegza (second place, At Work), Jake Lang (third place, At Work), Tom Houquet (second place, Military), and Filip Modrzejewski (third place, Military). The second-place winners have each won $500, while the third-place winners take home $250.
Vertical 2018 Photo Contest from MHM Media on Vimeo.
This year also saw the debut of the Vertical Readers’ Choice award, in which visitors to verticalmag.com could vote for their favorite from every photo that was entered into the contest. The winning photo was submitted by Idiart Xavier.
The 2018 Vertical Photo Contest was sponsored by Bell Helicopter, Airbus Helicopters, Airwork, Metro Aviation, PHP, Safran Helicopter Engines, and Wysong Enterprises.
