These photos are terrible but they just won $50,000 and a trip to Iceland

Icelandair has chosen Blanche Montemard, 28, as the winner of its "Really Bad Photographer" contest. She will receive $50,000 and a 10-day trip around Iceland this summer.

The airline revealed Montemard, who lives in the suburbs of Paris, on June 3, capping a campaign built to prove that "even the worst photographer can take great photos of Iceland."

“I have been to a lot of beautiful places,” Blanche said in her video application. “And somehow I still can’t figure out how to capture them.”

Urgent Matter previously reported on the contest in April, when the open call promised the job to whoever could best show they lacked camera skills.

Icelandair said it received 127,642 applications from 176 countries before narrowing the field to 13 finalists. There are 195 countries recognized globally. It was not immediately clear which 19 countries were not represented in the applications.

The airliner sorted through the applications with remarkable speed. Applications closed May 1, the airline revealed its finalists May 29 and named Montemard on June 3 — roughly five weeks to clear all 127,642 submissions.

Icelandair said the screening process took over 2,000 hours and included interviews. The company said it was "calling in reinforcements" to handle the huge number of entries. They did not explain exactly how they scored or ranked the submissions, other than saying they looked for the "best of the worst."

Once the airline narrowed the field to 13 finalists, it announced them on Instagram and invited the public to vote for their favorite. The marketing team made the final decision.

The vetting also tested for consistency to ensure the selected photographer was truly the worst. During interviews, Montemard scrolled through her camera roll and produced enough additional bad photos to confirm her lack of skill was genuine, Insauga reported.

In a statement announcing the winner, Gísli S. Brynjólfsson, Icelandair's global director of marketing, said the company was "thrilled to have finally found our bad photographer" and that the project had "resonated across the globe because people are tired of manufactured perfection."

Looking at Montemard’s portfolio, it’s easy to see why she won.

In one of her photos, a seagull sits on an ornate lamppost against a perfect blue sky. It could have been a great shot, but a giant earlobe eclipses the right third of the frame.

A snow-covered Oslo, shot from a high overlook beside a ski jump, dissolves so completely out of focus that the whole scene reduces to smears of winter light beneath a blown-out sun.

Another photo from an Oslo overlook is almost in focus, which is an improvement, but a blurry thumb covers the top-left corner of the lens.

The Statue of Liberty, photographed at night from across the water, shows up as a grainy white smudge floating in near-total darkness, identifiable mostly by process of elimination.

"For years, friends and family have asked why my photos always look disappointing. I'm thrilled to finally have an answer: I was training for this role. This project celebrates imperfection — probably the only photography competition I ever stood a chance of winning," Montemard said.

On her application, she put it more plainly: "I approach photography the way people pack carry ons: ambitiously but limited by reality."

Montemard is a twin who lives with her brother and has a slight British accent from living in the UK as a child, according to the airline. She isn’t interested in photography, but she has gone skydiving 20 times, follows Formula 1 closely — she is a Charles Leclerc fan — and plays guitar occasionally, by her own account not well.

The winner receives flights, accommodation and transportation for the trip along with the $50,000 fee. Icelandair said Montemard will travel the country in late June, with results to follow on the company's website and social media.

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