The rule-bending winners of Red Bull Illume Special Image Quest 2020

Spinning off from the Red Bull Illume Quest photography competition comes Red Bull Illume Special Image Quest 2020. Like its sibling, this competition showcases imagery from the world of adventure and action sports, but with an Instagram focus. The category and overall winners of the inaugural contest have now been announced.

Every three years since 2007, the Red Bull Illume Quest photography competition has highlighted some of the best images capturing adventure and action sports around the globe. In 2019, its fifth year, the competition added two new categories: the Best of Instagram and a Moving Image category. The organizers must have been impressed because it has spawned Red Bull Special Image Quest 2020, which tasked entrants with submitting still and moving imagery “celebrating adventure and action sports creativity on Instagram in 2020.”

Taking out best overall video and first place in the Homework category, which, in keeping with the lockdowns commonplace in 2020, asked competitors to get create making content anywhere around their home, is Nuri Yilmazer for his inventive parkour stop animation.

Meanwhile, the overall winning pic and winner of the Throwback category blending then and now in one image went to Florian Breitenberger for a creative photo within a photo that brings some winter thrills to a summer landscape.

 

© Florian Breitenberger / Red Bull Illume

The overall and category winner for Storytale, which is for Instagram Stories, went to Tay Seng Tee, whose video is sure to be relatable to any photographer or videographer who has spent a lot of time composing that perfect shot just to have it ruined by something unexpected.

For the best image in the Homework category the judges singled out a black and white time lapse from Diana Oros depicting a snow boarder jumping from one can of, you guessed it, Red Bull, to another.

 

© Diana Oros / Red Bull Illume

In the Unseen category, which asked for something different in terms of angles, format, lighting or ideas, the best still image was deemed a shot by Germain Favre Felix, which can be seen at the top of this article and appears to show a BMX jumping above the ocean waves.

As for the best moving image in the Unseen category, that went to Victor Haegelin for his animation of a skeleton tearing things up on a skateboard, until distracted by a dolphin – naturally.