CEE/Newsletter/Newsroom/The final results of the Wiki Loves Earth 2023 — CEE community
- By: Olesia Lukaniuk
On the 6th of December, the international organizing team of the largest photo contest devoted to natural heritage, Wiki Loves Earth, announced the final winners of the 2023 edition!
Last year, the contest was held for the 10th time, lasting from May 1st to August 31st, and involved a record number of participating countries — 50.
Many countries that started WLE last or a few years ago continued organizing the contest in 2023. And 11 of them joined the contest for the first time this year.
Among them, 10 countries represented the CEE region in 2023:
- Albania (358 uploads)
- Kosovo (143 uploads)
- Croatia (403 uploads)
- Czech Republic (348 uploads)
- Serbia (2,704 uploads)
- Slovakia (450 uploads)
- Armenia (3,039 uploads)
- Azerbaijan (277 uploads)
- Turkey (1,525 uploads)
- Ukraine (4,546 uploads)
Overall, WLE received more than 61,700 submissions from over 3,300 uploaders.
42 countries submitted their local winners and moved to the international level (with 492 local winning images).
As usual, each country has chosen up to 15 local winners in two categories — not more than ten from each of the two categories:
- Landscapes (including individual trees if it's a nature monument);
- Macro/close-up (animals, plants, fungi).
The international jury team, which consisted of 13 experienced photographers, experts, and Wikimedians from all around the world, worked on selecting the top 20 international winners.
In the final, the two images from Ukraine, which represent the CEE region, took the 1st winning place in the macro category and the 9th winning place in the landscapes category.
Also, the two images from Turkey took the 3rd and 7th winning places in the landscapes category.
Check the full list of the winners in the blog post.
In addition, WLE 2023 had a special nomination “Human Rights and Environment” aiming at raising awareness of nature protection and human impacts on nature.
Starting from the last year, participants worldwide could participate in this nomination, and 8,500+ images were received in the end.
The team of 6 jurors helped to choose the best top 10 images, which are announced here.
An image from Serbia took 3rd place in the nomination, and two images from Ukraine took 2nd and 4th places.
If you want to know more about the winners of WLE 2023 and the contest overall, wait for the full jury report, which will be available on Wikimedia Commons soon.
You can also follow the project on social media to keep up with updates (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter).