A highlight for 2015 was winning the Open Colour Print category at my camera club’s end of year competition, which is judged by the amazing and inspiring Tony Hewitt. The same image of a Red-capped Plover was awarded Highly Commended at the 2014 Spring in the Hills exhibition; the canvas print sold at that exhibition. In 2015 both the images I entered in the Spring in the Hills sold, which was very gratifying (also saved me the trip up to Kalamunda to collect them).
I was happy with my results in the 2014 International Loupe Awards – two images were awarded Silver (Bronze is considered equivalent to professional level, Silver is above that) and made it into the top 50 in Open Science and Nature. I really enjoyed the challenge of entering the Loupe Awards, where you could compete with professional photographers in the open categories; unfortunately it seems to have closed down. In the 2014 Better Photography competition I achieved another two Silver awards and in 2015 scored four Silvers, with 3 images in the top 50 of the “Revealing Nature” category.
In 2014 I entered the Perth Royal Show’s photography competition; four images were accepted for display with two being awarded a Merit. In 2015 and 2016 I had more accepted (seven each year) but no merits or places – definitely one of my goals is to gain a place at the show. Competition is fierce though!
It is always exciting to see my images in print – an image that did well in the ANZANG competition in 2013 was selected for “Wild Australasia”, a book commemorating the 10th Anniversary of ANZANG. It was also used for an article about pollination biology in the Australian Geographic magazine. I have had images selected for the Birdlife WA annual calendar several times, which is a great way to contribute to fundraising for research on Australian Bitterns. The Birdlife Australia magazine has used a couple of my images recently and various other conservation bodies have used images for promotion of research activities (e.g Rock parrots on Rottnest Island and monitoring of Carnaby’s Cockatoos at ECU).
Nature in Focus 