JAVIER SÁNCHEZ MARTÍNEZ

The Memorial María Luisa is, without doubt, one of the best international mountain photography contests. The seriousness and transparency of the rules and, especially, the friendliness and generosity of its organisers have been a key aspect in my decision to take part year after year, even being aware of the difficulty in winning a competition where the quality of the images is almost impossible to surpass.

I have been taking mountain photographs for years and I have published three large-format illustrated books and co-operated in another thirty with publishers such as Lunwerg, Anaya, La Librería, Book Style…apart from contributing photographic reports and photographs for magazines, such as National Geographic Traveler, El País Semanal, Geo, Muy Interesante, Paisajes, Desnivel, Grandes Espacios, Pyrenaica… but, in spite of everything, the Memorial María Luisa award has been one of my greatest satisfactions as a photographer.

Concerning the winning photograph, I would only like to say that it is one of the most impressive views one can contemplate in Africa. I took it from the summit of Kibo, Kilimanjaro, just as the first rays of the Sun illuminated the vertical glacier overlooking the great savannah. The conditions were extremely difficult: temperatures below zero and an unpleasant wind. We did not have too much time so I took out my Hasselblad Xpan and took several photographs. As the Velvia film was low sensitivity film (50 ISO); I forced it a bit. As it was in a panoramic format (24x65), I could not enter it as a conventional slide, so I had to digitalise it for the Memorial, as this year's rules accepted digital photographs.

I would like this photograph to remain in our minds throughout the present Polar Year, as a tribute to all those glaciers that are losing mass. Calculations conclude that "The last snows of the Kilimanjaro" will disappear within about fifteen years; I hope we are still in time to be able to contemplate as many images of glaciers as have been entered in this year's contest.