Tim Leffel’s Cheapest Destinations

Travel Photo Contest Winners

Our four judges wrapped up the travel photo contest we ran with Lonely Planet’s Citiescape Guides and we have our winners. Congrats to Joel Carillet who scored the whole box set for this fine shot from Kathmandu:

You can read all about Joel and the other people who came out on top on the photo contest winners page. You can also see a bit about the judges there as well.

We received close to 50 entries, but the top-3 choices from the judges were surprisingly consistent. Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but a photo that stands out from the pack is apparently not so hard to spot.

I didn’t cast a vote, so don’t send me questions about why your shot didn’t make the finals or which brand of camera anyone used. Having published more than my share of photos in magazines using something that was nowhere close to a top-end SLR, I can say this though: the right lighting and a good eye will beat an expensive piece of equipment any day. (In the old days, I once shot a roll of slides using a $14.95 plastic camera I bought from a drugstore when my nice SLR died in the middle of a writing assignment halfway around the world. One of the shots from that roll was the main photo used in the eventual magazine spread. But I’ll never tell…)