2023 Best of the Best Photo Contest – we have a winner!

2 August 2023 Forests in photos

We are delighted to announce the 2023 PEFC Photographer of the Year – the Best of the Best from six years of PEFC photo contests.

The Award went to Keril Chairil, for his stunning image ‘Morning Activities’, taken at Situ Gunung Lake in West Java, Indonesia. The image captures the magical atmosphere at the forest lake in the early morning.

Morning Activities was the winner of our Experience Forests, Experience PEFC photo contest back in 2020, when it was judged the best out of the nearly 8000 photos that were entered.

 “Photography has been my hobby since 2009, and I especially like landscape photography,” said the winning photographer.

“I took this photo in the morning at Situ Gunung, Gunung Gede Pangrango National Park, Sukabumi West Java Indonesia. It's a great coincidence that I love nature photos, and in the country where I live, we have a very wide and beautiful forest. In this forest, I get a lot of inspiration for my photos,” he continued.

“For me, protecting the forest can be to visualize it in photos and share them with the public. Those who see my photos can see first-hand the state of the forest around them.”

The 2023 Photo Contest

The 2023 PEFC Photo Contest was the first of its kind: a Best of the Best contest, looking for the best photo among winners and finalists of the past six years of contests.

For the first time, choosing the winner was not in the hands of our jury, but of the public. Everybody was invited to vote for their favourite image. Thank you very much to the hundreds of forest- and photography lovers who have casted their votes!

“I would like to thank the PEFC team for putting the photos of past winners back into the competition to be selected as the Best of the Best photo. I am also very grateful to everyone who has voted for my photo. Thank you very much,” Keril concluded.

You can see all 14 of the photos entered into our Best of the Best Photo Contest here.