The Pinkbike Photo of the Year Contest has finally come down to the last two images, and it's quite a surprise. When we first selected 32 images out of the almost 6000 that were nominated, we had no real idea on how things would end up. We chose images that we personally liked and found interesting, exciting, inspirational, or just plain beautiful. And it took a while. The initial judges were Fraser Britton, Harookz, Sterling Lorence, Colin Meagher, Margus Riga and myself, and we all chose a variety of different images that we liked. Then we sat down to dinner one night and went over them, bashing each others decisions, and cutting images left and right until we had 32 that we were happy with and agreed on and then we handed it over to you, the people of Pinkbike, to make the final decisions.
VS
There will be some detractors who think there is a lack of action, but really I think we need to look at this objectively and learn something from it. Many people will be thinking "how could this happen?", because they preferred an action shot, either Sam Davies tuck no handed flip shot, or Christophe Laue's water roost shot. But lets take a closer look at this. To start with I think we need to look at the average Pinkbike user. With the average user coming in at 29.3 years old, I think there is a preference for more moody and inspirational shots than something action packed photos that some younger users might prefer. Either way, the final of the Pinkbike Photo of the Year Contest has come down to two images that are quite similar in many ways. They both inspire us emotionally, they both have an analogous color scheme, and neither of them are really about the rider themselves. They're not close-up action images of a specific rider, even Berrecloth would be mostly anonymous if not for his name in the caption, instead they're images that are inspirational and appeal to many different people. When you think about it that way, it's really no big surprise at all. Head over to the main
POY Page and vote for your favorite of the final two.
The winner of this round wins a 2012 Specialized Demo and ANY F-stop bag with 2 ICU's plus a Dakota accessory kit.Vote Final Round HereWhat's at stake? $20,000+ in prizes!
Round of 32 - All 32 receive a pair of SPY Sunglasses (MSRP $120 each)
Round of 16 - All 16 receive two pairs of Tioga Psycho Genius tires (MSRP $200 for two pairs)
Round of 8 - All 8 receive a set of Black Race Face Atlas cranks (MSRP $339.99 each)
Round of 4 - All 4 receive a Marzocchi 66RC3 Evo Ti (MSRP $1199.00 each) and an F-stop Guru bag with ICU (MSRP $245 each)
Winner - Receives a Complete 2012 Specialized Demo (MSRP $6600) and ANY F-stop bag plus 2 ICU's plus a Dakota accessory kit (MSRP $500)
Thanks to
Specialized,
Marzocchi,
Race Face,
Tioga,
F-Stop Gear and
Spy 
In contest like this I prefer pictures taken by riders more then perfect shots from the photo pros.
