Over 100,000 photos entered for 2016 and the winner is the young photographer, Kirvan Baldassari. His first ever published photo, double-page in a magazine ends up the winner for the year.
Kirvan Baldassari Wins 2016 Photo Challenge
on surfline.com
Amazing, aquamarine Teahupoo tube takes top honors for the year
It was a busy year in surf photography. Over 110,000 photos were uploaded to Surfline’s Local Pro photo pages over 2016. “There were some amazing photos in this year’s Photo Challenge,” says Surfline photo editor Billy Watts. “It’s amazing the amount of great images that keep coming through the Local Pro pipeline.
We’ve been getting A+ submissions from around the world. Crazy lineups from Mexico, beautiful slabs from Western Australia, Indonesia and even the Mediterranean — and some world-class action shots as well.”
Each month, we gathered around the pixels and picked what we judged to be the ten best from the nearly 10,000 pics uploaded from that month. We’d present ‘em to you, the reader, and you voted on your favorite. Each of the monthly winners won some rad Goal Zero gear. And after much deliberation amongst the photo team here — Billy Watts, Pat Nolan, Jeremiah Klein and Jeff Hall — we decided on the best of the best, and that shot is none other than Kirvan Baldassari’s amazing shot of Matehau Tetopata on one of the most beautiful, dangerous Teahupoo waves we’ve seen. (You also liked it best: it garnered 2,5000 votes in the month it was run — double the closest pic.) Baldassari’s wins A full Goal Zero Power, solar, light set up, a Chris Burkard print — and a thousand bucks cash.
