One day before the Finale. These are the three nominees for the Belgian Belfius press award. I'm in there with my topshot series of the famous Brussels' picknick: PickNick the streets.   Angry Brussels' citizens occupied the streets in the center of Brussels almost a year ago. They want Brussels to be friendly for tourist and pedestrians, in stead of being a highway for cars all over town.    

This series is now nominated for the Belgian Belfius bank photojournalism award 2013. I won this award 2 years ago. Couldn't submit pictures last year but was in the jury, and now, this year I'm nominated again! That's really great news, especially 1 day before my birthday!-)

No, that just wasn't possible. Ok, at the European Commission I could get a few meters from him. Though it was no more than a talking head, I stayed focused on his gestures, smiles, eyes and expressions for the entire press conference, ending up with a nice series of portraits. Probably just like the 50 other photographers in the room. Some of them send there pictures right to their picture editor, who will select the best one and fill in all iptc information.   I don't do that. I am a slow photojournalist. Shooting all this in RAW makes me get home with a lot of footage. With my cup of coffee in one hand I select the best images using Photo Mechanics, and will do a little postproduction in Adobe Lightroom.   From there I also add the precise details in the caption and then I finally can deliver my images to my agency, or I send it directly to the papers and magazines.   Now I need to find a photoeditor who doesn't choose the first or cheapest picture of the event, but an editor looking for a high quality picture of the event, with bright colors and interesting composition. I only get updates of my agency once a month, so it will take about 5 weeks until I know they have sold one picture. And a lot of times really nothing is sold while all agencies have about the same pictures.   at least I end up with some nice pics for my pf.    

The media. It surprises me that  Dutch speaking media bring the news on the Belfius Awards only by focusing on themselves only. They all mention the award won by their medium, but will not mention all the winners and sometimes not even the name of the journalist. Belgian national TV is proud of their award for tv-news. Newspaper De Standaard invested in datjournalism and made Maxi Eckert win an award. The Press Radio award was won by   Radio 1  Joos. Two journalists, Lars Bové and Bart Haeck of De Tijd won the main award, on financial economic news, with a story on Bernard Arnault and his firms in Belgium, revealing Belgium as a tax-paradise. A story that made a lot of political turmoil. De Tijd also states winning the photography press-award. The winner of the press-award for photography was Belgian photographer  Colin Delfosse with a serie on M23 fighters in Northern-Kivu. He won the Sony award with the same serie before, and the Tijd did publish his work but I don't know if they assigned him for his travels. French speaking media are more objektive and write about all winners, like l'Avenir,   RTL and DH. What de Tijd and Trends/Knack do with the protest outside the Belfius building during the Award ceremony is ok. They do mention the protest of Belfius unionists criticizing freedom of speech for Belfius employees. As the winner of the 2011 Belfius Award on photography I was asked to help judging the photography category and to assist the final judging yesterday. A great experience and the judging really was a tough job. Reading, listening and watching all those news-items. Serious discussion on some categories, but I'm quite happy with the winners. Congratulations! The judges saw the level of journalism being quite high, but ask all journalists to please send more work next year.