Canon Central & North Africa (www.Canon-CNA.com), a pioneer of innovative imaging products, announced the winners of its latest sports photography competition – ‘Capture the Action’ #CelebrateAfrica. Run in collaboration with a leading media outlet, Pan African Visions, the competition provided a platform for up-and-coming African photographers, over the age of 18, to showcase their talent and harness the power of visual storytelling.

“‘Capture the action’ #CelebrateAfrica is aimed to showcase the stars, their performance, and the intrepid stories behind their rise to the top. The competition celebrates Africa’s contribution to sports and brings forth the stories of athletic achievement,” says Amine Djouahra, Director of Sales, and Marketing, Canon Central and North Africa. “Canon as a brand has always been at the forefront of innovation and technology. This contest embodies the technological brilliance and phenomenal performance, going beyond the realm of possibility. We are thrilled to have partnered with Pan African Visions and are amazed to see the overwhelming response and submissions of incredible actions captured from the continent as we witnessed Africa hosting various international sports events in different countries. We would like to congratulate the winners who aptly captured the vibrant spirit of African sportsmanship in their stellar images and to all the participants”.

A celebration of African sports and photographic talent

Canon and Pan African Visions’ ‘Capture the Action’ #CelebrateAfrica photography contest encouraged participants to choose submissions that would showcase spectacular sporting moments, and capture athletes in action allowing viewers across social media channels to follow their journeys and user generated content through #CelebrateAfrica. It celebrated not only Africa’s sports stars, but the skilled and talented photographers covering them.

Publisher and Managing Editor of Pan African Visions, Ajong Mbapndah L, explained that the massive number of submissions was overwhelming, and the high volume of response from our community made it a huge success. The submissions came from all corners of Africa which speaks volumes on the growing passion for sports photography. It was an honour for Pan African Visions to partner with Canon for the competition. As a brand, Canon needs no introduction, and it is our hope that there will be more initiatives of this kind to enable young Africans to showcase their talent to the rest of the world. Congratulations to the contestants, winners, jury, and again, a big thank you to Canon."

The competition saw a total of 6749 submissions from photographers from Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, Cote D'ivoire, Algeria, Ghana, Nigeria, Tunisia, Uganda, Senegal, Ethiopia, Cameroon, Rwanda, Tanzania, Gabon, PR Congo, DR Congo.

Assessing the talent

The winners were chosen through the expertise of an exclusive jury panel which was selected especially for the competition, and who better to assess Africa’s phenomenal sporting photography talent than a panel of exceptional photographers who have themselves captured the action from the side of the sports field on many occasions.

Canon Ambassador Jorge Ferrari is one of the most in-demand photographers in the United Arab Emirates. With an illustrious career spanning three decades, Jorge has covered almost every event imaginable, from news and politics to commercial work and Formula 1 – and he has fired his shutter at some of the biggest sports stars on the planet. “It was very difficult to choose from many high-quality entries. As a photographer myself, I was looking at the level of skill, positioning, timing, composition, street, and message of the images. The difference was in the smallest of details, we had a look closely at the original images — without retouching — to be able to assess the level of skills, to be able to pick up the winners.”

Frank Darkwah is a 31-year-old CAF & FIFA accredited Photojournalist and sportswriter who has worked with Ghana sports online, and 442 Ghana, a sports photography hub. He covered the 2017 WAFU Championship, the 2018 Africa Women’s Cup of Nations, and the 2022 WAFU U17 Championships. Frank covered matches involving Ghana’s National teams, the Ghana Premier League matches, as well as other sporting disciplines such as athletics, rugby, and boxing amongst others. He says the ability to get your shots right is often influenced by the type of sports you are shooting, as some allow for good shots to be captured more easily than others. “When assessing I focussed on whether the photographer was shooting from the right angle, and also whether or not the photographers got their cropping on point and the winner did that perfectly.”

The third member of the judging panel was fifty-two-year-old Kerifallah Janneh (K J) from Southern Sierra Leone. KJ started his photography career in 1991 as an apprentice to a commercial professional photographer in Freetown. A year later he was employed by the Concord Times newspaper where he trained as a press photographer. In 2017, KJ founded the Center Photojournalism Sierra Leone where photographers and photojournalists are trained with new skills in digital photography.

Winning entries

Prizes for the competition were powered by Canon, and included a Canon EOS R5 as the 1^st prize, a Canon EOS R7 as the 2^nd prize, and a Canon PRO 200 Printer as the 3^rd prize.

Well done to the winners of the Canon Capture the Action photography competition!

The ‘Capture the Action’ photography competition under #CelebrateAfrica has significantly helped Canon to grow our incredible African community of aspiring photographers.

Based upon its enormous success, we'll be back soon with another exciting competition for our Canon enthusiasts!