Andre Boto, winner of “photo of the year” has answered some questions for Bored Panda. 

“Being the overall winner of the Siena Awards is an amazing achievement,” he said. “After two years of winning in the Product category, I entered again with the hope to be at the top again like in the past, but I was not expecting to win the main award at all. It was a good surprise because this is a huge competition with a lot of participants and images entered and it's not the kind of competition where we can build a strategy to try to win.”

“I think I don't have any unusual techniques,” Andre shared. “I believe today it's more about creativity and concept than the technique. Or, the technique is something that the professional photographers have to know in advance, it's kind of mandatory. People don't like to stop and think, and I believe that's the main thing today.

I compare photography to "fast food", the flavor of fast food it's not bad, it's fast to create, and fast to eat but afterward, it's not special. The "fast photography" is not bad, it's not difficult to create but the viewers will spend just some tenths of a second looking at it, and this kind of image normally doesn't communicate strongly enough to leave a mark on the viewers.”

We wondered if the photographer faces a creative block at times: “In the beginning, it's not easy to find ideas especially when we start a project from zero. To pass the creative blocks I think the researching is very important, and it's normally the first step.”

“It's important to research in our area (photography/imaging) but also in other areas of art like painting, sculpture, and films. All these areas can give us the inspiration needed to go ahead reducing the "creative block" while creating. I use drawing (sketch) and make notes a lot. That's normally the beginning of all my projects and it's the phase where I decide what elements I need to photograph.”

When asked about his future plans, Andre told us: “I normally say that I'm in photography to get fun. I like photography and Photoshop a lot, so, just working on something and having fun with that is huge.

I'm expecting to continue to photograph in my main commercial areas of work (industry, architecture, interior, and product) and continue to develop my personal projects based on photography and extreme post-production in Photoshop. I'm dedicating some time to themes like pollution, global warming, animal life in danger, and these kinds of social problems. And of course, I will continue entering some photographic competitions. The competitions are always a nice goal to make me produce.”