The Leica Oskar Barnack Award, named for the inventor of the Leica, is in its 32nd year. For the past three years entries have been collected solely on the internet and the number of participants has nearly doubled from when photographers entered offline. This year was a record year: there were over 2,000 submissions from 89 countries, with most coming from Germany, the USA, China, France and Russia.

On April 12th the Oskar Barnack Jury met in Frankfurt, Germany to review the entries. This year’s jury included: Anna Grip, Editor of Photonews in Germany; Karin Rehn-Kaufmann, Director of the Leica Gallery in Salzburg, Austria; Stanley Greene, a Professional Photographer based in France and the USA and Mark Rykoff, Photo Editor at Time.com. After many, many hours of reviewing submissions, the winners were selected. Here’s a video with a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the judges deliberating. However, you’ll have to wait until June to find out who won!

-Leica Internet Team