The 2023 AIP Photography Competition, run by the ACT branch but open to entries Australia wide, concluded in October.
The winners have been decided! Congratulations to the winners and to everyone who participated.
Grand Prize and University Student Prize: Ivan Toftul
The Grand Prize was awarded to Ivan Toftul for a work on birefringence. Looking through a linear polariser, you see cuts of tape stuck on a laptop screen in the shape of a heart. Because plastic molecules are elongated, the tape exhibits birefringent properties: ordinary and extraordinary rays exit the plastic in or out of phase depending on wavelength and thickness resulting in eclectic colours that form an image.
The University Student Prize was also awarded to Ivan Toftul for a depiction of the nanostructure of a metamaterial via diffraction. Structuring material on a nanoscale opens up great possibilities in modern photonics. While it is not possible to see the actual design with the naked eye, the clusters of different metasurfaces create beautiful diffraction patterns.
Outstanding Photo Award: Jared Landau
Jared's photo won The Outstanding Photo Award, featuring the planets imaged from his own backyard. This image shows Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus scaled according to their apparent sizes as seen from Earth.
This was captured from Jared’s backyard in suburban Melbourne with an 8" Newtonian telescope. It highlights the incredible capabilities available to modern astronomers. This type of detail would have been unthinkable to amateur observers even a few decades ago! The fact that high-quality astrophysical data can be collected from the comfort of your own home (with relatively modest equipment) was a huge motivator in Jared’s decision to study physics.
School Student Prize: Kate Kristiansen
The School Student Prize was awarded to Kate Kristiansen, who photographed capillary waves on water. 
Kate chose to photograph waves because of how important they are in physics. They come up in light waves, sounds waves and even in the foundation of quantum mechanics and string theory. Kate wanted to capture one of the simplest forms of waves – and understand the foundation of waves – before learning the depth and complexity of more intricate waves.
Cognates
