It is with great pleasure that we are now able to announce the judges for the IWPOY 2008 and to thank them in advance for the difficult task that they have already started. With such diversity and quality of images this year their task is not an enviable one however, their photographic skills and backgrounds have equipped them well for this challenge.
Steve Gascoigne
Steve was born in Coventry in 1973. After achieving ‘A’ Levels in Art and Photography, Steve started his career as a photojournalist, before gaining the opportunity to become a photographic hand printer for a leading company in the field. Here he spent 10 years learning the skills and artistry involved in crafting photographic prints for some of the country’s top photographers.
Steve started Available Light Photography after moving to the Isle of Wight in October 2000. Struck by the allure and variety of the Island’s landscape, Steve decided to use his years of photographic experience to capture this beauty. His grounding in traditional photographic techniques helped immensely when Steve took the plunge and ‘went digital’ in 2003. No longer constrained to the darkroom, Steve now has more time to concentrate on taking the unique images he sells, and printing them using the latest archival inks and papers that outlast traditional photographic media.
As Ansel Adams famously said – “The negative can be seen as the score sheet, the print is the performance” and this holds true for digital as well as film. Each image has been crafted to be as close to the scene that was originally perceived, using the traditional darkroom techniques of dodging, burning and masking. This ensures that the beauty of the landscape is uncompromised, and the print can try and do justice to the scene it depicts. All of Steve’s work can be viewed online on his website, www.availablelight.cc
Chris Barton
Chris was born on the Island way back in the sixties and showed an early interest in photography, setting up a school darkroom and becoming the official unofficial photographer of 1024 squadron air cadets (of which he was a member).
After a school career, in which Chris mostly stayed out of trouble, he spent some time on the mainland learning about photography at college.
Returning to the Island he worked for a photographer and then moved into colour and black & white processing before going into retail. Chris has spent some time as a member of several camera clubs over the years and carried out photographic judging work in the 80’s and 90’s.
Chris has worked for the Island Photo Centre for 18 years, seeing the company evolve to provide different services such as photo restoration, image recall, in-store large format printing, in-house teaching and product photography.
Ben Wood
Based at his studio in Bembridge on The Isle of Wight, where he runs his company Island Images, Ben is best known for his signature black and white marine photography and his highly successful landscape images from his book The Island. However, since re-locating to the island from London ten years ago Ben has diversified into motor-racing, equine and shooting photography.
His most recent exhibition Equus showed in London and Paris and featured 40 prints from the polo fields of Apremont and the race tracks of Chantilly and Longchamps. The shell series started as a private commission and has since developed into Ben’s most current project. The shells and coral are sourced from all over the world and then photographed using very soft light in his studio. In the printing stage the giclee paper is given extra texture by applying a glaze over the image.
Ben also takes on commercial commissions for a wide range of advertising, architectural and design clients and is represented in London by Getty Images and Corbis.
You can view Ben’s work at www.islandimages.org.uk
Please take a little time to view the competition judge’s websites - there are some great images in their galleries and as photographers we can all gain some benefit from their skills and professionalism.
Chris was born in Southampton in 1961 and as soon as he was crawling around suburbia Ladybirds were being desiccated in matchboxes and tadpoles tortured in jam jars. Husbandry skills improved and the menagerie expanded to large collections of reptiles (inside) and birds of prey, foxes, badgers, squirrels etc (generally outside). A precocious young scientist, swot and nerd in training he studied Kestrels, Shrews and Badgers in his teens and undergraduate days at the Zoology department of Southampton University. He also embraced Punk Rock and played in a band and the DIY ethos and determination to never take ‘no’ for an answer are forcefully retained. Continue Reading »
