AWARDS APPA – the best of the best
AIPP AUSTRALIAN PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR
Find out what it takes to be crowned Australia’s best professional photographer, beating off a 500-strong field.
It’s quite an achievement to be judged Australia’s top professional photographer, especially when you’re competing against another 500 of the country’s hot shots.
Melbourne-based portrait photographer Keren Dobia is currently Australia’s reigning AIPP Australian Professional Photographer Of The Year. Her portfolio of four prints – reproduced here – beat a field of 2000 submissions from 500 professionals in the 2017 Australian Professional Photography Awards (APPAs). Keren also works as a creative director for theatrical productions: designing, creating and sourcing costumes and sets. You can see the theatrical influences in her remarkable portraits.
Keren Dobia is a graduate of NMIT Diploma of Photoimaging and now lectures at Melbourne Polytechnic and RMIT. She has previously exhibited her work in a variety of different galleries, most notably at Obscura Gallery – a fine-art photography gallery in St. Kilda, Melbourne. She says her passion for the visual arts has driven her to create her dramatic and emotive imagery.
“My background in painting and drawing has allowed me to blur the line between photography and illustration,” she explains.
To be eligible for the title of Australian Professional Photographer Of The Year, photographers must first win an APPA category. Not surprisingly, Keren won the portrait category in the 2017 Awards. A panel of experts then further anonymously assesses all category winners’ work side-by-side to determine the overall winner. Innovation, content, creativity, technical excellence and impact are the key criteria when the images are re-assessed.