Photography News | Issue 39 | absolutephoto.com
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Interview Take a view This year’s Landscape Photographer of the Year competition saw thousands of entries. We speak to the contest’s founder and head judge Charlie Waite to find out more about the competition and hear from this year’s winner Matthew Cattell Competition special
landscape photography with as many people as possible and provide a platformwhere their creative endeavours could be seen by a greater number of people. Before the internet changed everyone’s lives, it was hard for an individual to find an audience for their work. These days, we see so many images, but many of them in a very ephemeral way; move your finger across the screen of your mobile and they are gone, often forever, and so having an image printed in a book and shown at an exhibition is still of vital importance to a photographer. I also wanted to celebrate the amazing British landscape; we are increasingly disconnected from our natural environment and I believe that landscape photography can help us to feel more involved again. Can you tell us about the judging process for the competition? We have three stages of judging, including two where the judges actually get together to
discuss the images in person. As a landscape photographer myself, I know how much time and thought goes into the creation of each and every one of our entries and it’s hardwhen you have to disappoint people but, on the reverse side, there’s the feeling when you succeed. Does the competition see more professional or amateur entries? With landscape photographers, it is hard to define ‘professional’. Many people who are veryprofessional in their approachalsohave to work elsewhere to supplement their income. It is a hard business tomake a comfortable living from on its own and I believe the number of people who actually make their living entirely from landscape photography is very small. We try to avoid the word ‘amateur’ if we can, as even someone who is just getting their first camera can have ‘the eye’ and that is the most important thing. I feel that the standard of entries has been high across our first decade
Interview by Jemma Dodd
How did the Landscape Photographer of the Year competition come about? I’d had the idea at the back of my mind for some time when we started serious planning back in 2006. It involved a real leap of faith by a number of people, particularly the AA, the National Theatre and The Sunday Times Magazine , who agreed to support us before the website was built. And ten years later, here we are. I’mvery proud of it all and very involved. I think it’s easy to forget how isolated landscape photography was before the advent of social media; I suspected that many people found landscape photography to be important to their lives, as I did, but it was hard then to know howmany.
I believe that landscape photography can help us to feel more involved again Above Starling Vortex by Matthew Cattell, overall winner. “I attached a 70-200mm lens tomy Nikon D810 andmounted it on a tripod. As there was no immediate foreground I used an aperture of f/11 and pre-focused the lens – I knew the movement of the birds would play havoc with the autofocus. I used a relatively long exposure to capture the motion of the birds, but didn’t want them to be completely unrecognisable.”
What are the aims of the competition? Originally,Ijustwantedtosharemypassionfor
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