The International Pano Awards (also known as The EPSON International Pano Awards for sponsorship reasons) are an annual set of awards presented by EPSON Australia to recognise and honour the professional and the amateur photographers for their excellent work in the genre of panoramic photography. it is often described as the "world's largest panoramic photography competition".
History.
In 2009, David Evans created The International Pano Awards with the support of Epson Australia and, launched in the following year with ESPON as its title sponsor. later, Epson Southeast Asia joined them in 2024.
The winners of the awards are selected by a panel of judges which mainly consists of eminent photographers from various countries. Jeff Mitchum, Karl Strand, Mark Handy, Mel Sinclair, Abe Blair, Juan Pablo de Miguel, Adam Williams, Anna Gibiskys, Isabella Tabacchi, Darren Moore, Thomas Erh, Aaron Spence and Bill Bailey are some notable photographers who have been part of this panel.
In 2020, it received a record 5,859 entries from 1452 professional and amateur photographers in 96 countries.
Competition.
The competition consists of three main sections — "Open", "Amateur" and "VR/360", both the professional and amateur photographers are free to take part in the Open & the VR/360 sections.
The judging panel for the respective section selects the best image in two sub-categories — Built and Nature, except for the VR/360 section. The individuals with the highest combined score from their three photographs, all of which must place in the top-50 and at least one in the top-10, are declared the overall winners in the open and amateur sections. The other awards are judged according to the type of image such as stiched, aerial and vertical images. Additionally, It publishes a list of the top-50 photographs of Nature and Build categories in both the Open & the Amateur sections.