Photojournalism 3rd place winner

The annual festival takes place in the town of Ibi in Alicante, Spain on December 28, as part of celebrations related to the Day of the Innocents. In the day-long festival, participants known as the Els Enfarinats dress up in mock military clothing and stage a mock coup d'état. They redeem their authority under a blaze of fireworks, flour bombs, and eggs.

For a brief two-hour period I found myself in a warzone. I was thrilled, scared, and exhausted at the same time. This was something far out of my comfort zone as what my shoots normally look like. I didn't have the 'luxury' of directing people. I just had to document what was evolving in front of me. My assistant Drikus was carrying my flash and tried to aim the light at the scene I was shooting, which was a very hard thing to do because the scenes changed so rapidly.

To be honest I was not sure if I even had just one good image until we were back in our hotel and I saw the images on my laptop. I hope these images give a slight glimpse of the insane chaos we entered.

Jeroen Nieuwhuis was born in Oldenzaal, the Netherlands in 1991. His first encounter with photography came through his passion for skateboarding. The day he turned 11 years old he bought his first camera with his birthday money. This was a 0.2 megapixels digital camera the size of a box of matches. This ‘digital’ camera had no screen on the back and a internal memory of 20 images. With that camera, he began capturing his friends and trying to recreate the images he saw in the skateboard magazines. After a few years, he got his first DSLR camera for his 15th birthday. By reading blogs and watching photography tutorials online his interest expended from skateboarding into a more portrait and commercial style of photography. By the age of 21, Jeroen teamed up with his friend and cinematographer Erik and started NEW DAY studio. This collaboration made for some large international clients to join forces and within the first few months, they were shooting for Heineken, Philips, Johnnie Walker, and other large companies. An extra kickoff for the studio in 2013 was Jeroen’s winning image category image at the Red Bull Illume photography contest gaining international attention to his work.