General Comments on the Epson Pano Awards 2026
It has been an honour and a privilege to judge this year's Epson International Pano Awards. Judging is always a pleasure, as it offers the chance to enjoy so many wonderful photographs in one sitting.
When assessing an image, I consider technical quality, composition and storytelling together. Sharpness generally matters, although softness can be a deliberate and effective choice in abstract work. Good noise control is especially important in landscapes and nightscapes, and heavy cropping can compromise clarity and detail. I also felt that some images would have benefited from a lighter touch with saturation, allowing the colours to feel more natural.
In composition, a clear visual anchor gives the eye somewhere to settle and helps us understand what the photograph is about. Beautiful sunset colours, the patterns of an aurora or the arc of the Milky Way may catch our attention first, but it is the way a photographer draws together the lines and shapes within a scene that gives an image richness and meaning. This is particularly challenging in the panoramic format, where the long side is at least twice the length of the short side. Every part of the frame deserves attention, because even a strong subject can lose its impact when distracting details pull the eye elsewhere.
Storytelling is what makes me want to return to a photograph and spend more time with it. To me, a story is an experience or feeling that the image itself communicates. A human element can help create that connection, although it is by no means essential. A moving subject against a still background can also suggest a story through a sense of movement, contrast or the passing of time. What matters most is that we feel something. We all bring our own experiences to the photographs we view, and a strong image can move us in much the same way as music or film.
A winning photograph gives us an immediate sense of what the photographer wants to share, then rewards a longer look with meaning and feeling. The Gold Award images all displayed these qualities. The winning images went a step further, bringing everything together almost flawlessly: technical execution, composition and storytelling working in harmony, with very little to interrupt the connection between photograph and viewer.
Congratulations to everyone recognised, and thank you to every photographer who shared their work with us.
Jacky Lee is a photographic artist based in Canberra, born in Hong Kong, with thirty years behind the camera. He works in Intentional Camera Movement and named two methods within it, Intentional Focus Movement and Intentional Parallax Movement. He chairs the AI & Authorship Standards Subcommittee of the Australian Photographic Society, and is an Ambassador of the International Association of Art Photographers for 2026.
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