Busy, Busy, Busy
Well it’s been a long time since my last post, something I’ll have to work on for sure. It has been a very eventful time here over the last few months. I’ve relocated offices and now have a much better workplace that is self contained and far enough away from the everyday interruptions of my old “home office”.
In the last few months I’ve been able to add to my collection of landscape photographs with a journey to some truly awe inspiring parts of the USA, including the Grand Canyon and the Slot Canyons around Page in Arizona. As soon as I had returned from my travels, I had to prepare for the first round of competitions for the year with the London and Essex Professional Photography group, which is recognised by the MPA and the BIPP.
It went very well with some truly wonderful images from a number of great photographers we have in the region, which happens to be the best attended professional photographers group in the country. I was very happy to have won the Pictorial/Fine art category with this image, which was also deemed good enough to get me the overall Photographer of the Year Award for the second year running!
Pictorial Fine Art Winner
I was also quite flattered to have got 1st, 2nd and 3rd in the Beauty and Fashion category also for the second year running. Here are the successful images, top one came 3rd and the bottom one was the winner:
I was quite touched to have got and image of my dad, who is now 84 years of age who I photographed working on one of the last pairs of shoes he ever repaired, as unfortunately he is now suffering from the debilitating effects of Parkinson’s disease, and is unable to work any longer. He started working for the world renowned shoe makers John Lobb of St James’s Street SW1 when he was 67 years old, at that time he said he was the youngest shoemaker in the company, and he had to be shown their unique way of making shoes – totally by hand, without any machinery touching the shoes. He had been working with them up until early last year. In his old age he became a master craftsman! This image came 3rd in the Portrait category.
Another very moving image was of the Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery at Point Loma, San Diego CA. I visited this striking memorial venue with my cousin Andreas, who now lives in San Diego. It is particularly poignant looking at the sad loss of life we see as a result of war. The many hundreds if not thousands of tombstones in the undulating landscape, has an orderly beauty about it that is really quite strange. The day we visited was peculiar in many ways. It started off a beautiful sun drenched day, and as the day wore on, it began to get misty and quite dark for mid afternoon. As we arrived, the mist began rolling in off the Pacific ocean, giving mood to the landscape around the graves, turning everything almost monochromatic, indeed the way I remember the scene there in my mind, is in sepia tone – just like the photograph below!
If you’d like to see all the winning images from this years Regional Competition please go to the groups Facebook page, it’s well worth a look there are some great images. Hopefully this link should work: https://www.facebook.com/londonandessexgroup?fref=ts