Sunset Life by Kiều Anh Dũng

ĐÀ NẴNG – Việt Nam, the host of the ongoing 2017 APEC Economic Leaders’ Week, brought home all three top prizes of the APEC Photo Contest 2017.

The winners of the photo contest were announced at the Concluding Senior Officials’ Meeting by the APEC Secretariat’s Executive Director, Dr Alan Bollard, on Tuesday.

Harvest Time by Oki Arisandi

Kiều Anh Dũng of the Mekong Delta province of Bạc Liêu received the first prize for his work, Sunset Life. The second and third prize winners were Trương Vinh of HCM City for The Sea Flower and Trần Đình Thương of Bình Thuận Province’s Phan Thiết City for Building the Flower Industry, respectively.

The work Up and Forward by Yu-Han Kung from Chinese Taipei won the Popular Choice Award, and Harvest Time by Indonesia’s Oki Arisandi was presented the Influencer Award.

The Sea Flower by Trương Vinh

The APEC Photo Contest is an annual initiative of the APEC Secretariat to collect stakeholders’ views on APEC’s messages and priorities.

The contest seeks the public’s visual interpretation of APEC’s priorities for 2017, including promoting sustainable, innovative and inclusive growth, deepening regional economic integration, strengthening small businesses’ competitiveness and enhancing food security and sustainable agriculture.

Building the Flower Industry by Trần Đình Thương

The winners were evaluated by a judging panel consisting of world renowned photojournalists, industry experts and senior public officials, including APEC Executive Director Alan Bollard, Agence France-Presse Photo Editor for North America Eric Baradat, award-winning photographer Palani Mohan, APEC Photo Contest multi-year winner and photographer Trương Hữu Hùng, and Permanent Deputy Foreign Minister and Chair of APEC 2017 Senior Officials Bùi Thanh Sơn. 

In its seventh year, APEC Photo Contest 2017 received 2,126 entries from various APEC member economies, including Australia, Brunei Darussalam and China, as well as Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia and Mexico, in addition to New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Chinese Taipei, Singapore, Thailand and Việt Nam.

Up and Forward by Yu-Han Kung

In order to reach a wider audience, for the first time this year, the contest welcomed entries on Instagram, through the APEC Secretariat’s official account, @apec, accompanied by the hashtag #TradeforAll.

To honour the Instagram entries, a special “Influencer Award” was introduced and the winner was selected by the number of likes his/her photo received on this channel. The first winner of the award was Arisandi, whose photo received nearly 3,000 likes. — VNS