Punctum Day Award Winners

2009 Punctum Day Award Winners

The 2009 Punctum Day Award winners were selected for their outstanding quality and artistic merit in each of the six categories: Photo, Vector, Video, Audio, Flash and Design. Each of the Punctum Day Award winners in these six categories have won $5,000 USD.

The 60 finalists for six of the categories were selected from over 1,750,000 photos, vectors, videos, audio files, Flash files, and design submissions. The judging panel selecting the winners included Trish & Chris Meyer, founders of Crish Design (formerly CyberMotion), Russell Brown, Sr. Creative Director at Adobe Systems Incorporated, and Scott Kelby, Editor, Publisher, and co-founder of Photoshop User magazine and Editor-in-Chief of Layers magazine.

Thanks to everyone who voted for the 2009 Punctum Day Awards and congratulations to the winners! The winning contributors are:

Battle Royale Tournament Champion

jc_design (United States) won $5,000

The fourth annual iStock Steel Cage tournament began on May 28. 117 iStockers entered the Cage to duel it out for our big cash prize and the glory of being King of the Cage. We've finally seen the field narrow down to our final round, and are thrilled to proclaim that Jamie Carroll is the champion. Congratulations!

See the whole final round.

Punctum Day Inspector’s Choice Awards

In addition to the Punctum Day Awards given to five contributors in six different categories, we asked our dedicated, international Inspection team to vote for two other contributors who deserve some recognition and rewards. Here are the winners of the Inspector’s Choice Awards:

Most Deserving of New Gear

erlucho (Chile) won $5,000 towards new gear.

It is easy to spot people who are willing and eager to take their skills upstream… Luis belongs to that special breed of individuals. We are thrilled to be able to assist him in this way and can't wait to see what he does next.

Most Improved Contributor

kparis (United Kingdom) won $5,000

After having attended a few Minilypses & iStockalypses, after having watched, listened, after having assisted & learned, Kurt took his Art to the next level in a spectacular fashion this year.

Hall of Fame

iStockphoto’s Hall of Fame was introduced in 2007 to honor members who have left an indelible stamp on the history of iStock. They are selected by the secretive Punctum Elder Council. LiseGagne was the first inductee. Last year she was joined by Hidesy, Jester, and Intransfer. Please join us in welcoming this year's sole inductee:

bitter Bruce Livingstone, Founder (Canada & The United States)

Bruce never would have let us recognize him in this fashion while he was still here. We could have tried to secretly arrange to give him a big honor. He'd have found out though (he had a way of finding things out) and then he'd grab everybody and say 'Look, this isn't about me. iStock is bigger than one person. It's about a whole community. Put someone else in the Hall of Fame.'

Well, he isn't around to stop us now.

Trying to break down everything that Bruce did is really, really hard. On one hand it's easy to sum up. Bruce created iStockphoto. He built and guided this site from a small corner of the web where people could share their own stock photographs, to the world's busiest image marketplace. It's pretty staggering when you stop and think about the scale of what iStockphoto is and how fast it grew to its present state. Bruce worked around the clock for years to make that growth possible. It's no exaggeration to say that without his efforts, the whole photography and design industries would be completely different than they are today.

What isn't easy to sum up is how personally involved he was, day in and day out, with people from every corner of the community. If you worked in the office, then you worked with Bruce: he'd be at your desk to talk with you directly about the projects you were working on, and he'd have the best kind of constructive, helpful input all the time. If you were one of our contributors, then he'd know you and your work. He'd answer any sitemail, any time. If he was coming to your town for some reason he'd get in touch with you and meet you for dinner. He always had time for everyone.

He's out there, somewhere, thinking up big new ideas and probably not relaxing as much as he tells people. We just want to make sure that everyone here at iStock still remembers him, and not a day goes by that we don't value the enormous contribution he made to all of our lives.

Thanks, bitter. See you around the place sometime, okay?

Build your own trophy

Since we know that every one of you is a winner, just for taking the brave step of selling your art on iStock, we have a present for you. We hope you get a kick out of making your own trophy with our rad Custom Trophy Kit.