2kiwis

While I await the result of the Wanderlust Travel Photo of the Year competition I’ve been entering another competition closer to home. The NZ photo magazine DPhoto is running a competition in association with Canon to find the NZ Amatuer Photographer of the Year. I have entered the four categories and would love for anyone reading this to have a look and cast your vote. You don’t have to sign up to anything, just click to give a rating from 1 to 5 stars.

Here are my photos and the voting links (or just click on the photos):

Landscape category voting link here. This was taken in Torres del Paine national park, the day I walked to the towers (after coming home broken from two days of miserable walking on the W walk).

Monochrome category voting link here. There were a couple of wrecks on this stretch of shoreline. We were driving through Chilean Patagonia and were camping in the grounds of a deserted farmstead, the beach was just over the road and the boats were slowly rotting away.

Emotion category voting link here. Taken during a Carnival parade we attended while staying in Montevideo, Uruguay.

People category voting link here. This guy was watching the tourists from his home in Boca, Buenas Aires. The street behind his house is one of the most famous in the city, known for its bright colours and tango dancers.

And don’t forget to check out all the other entries as well and vote as you see fit: http://www.dphoto.co.nz/competitions/canon2010.

So I didn’t win, or come second, or get highly commended. But I made the top ten and had my photo on display at the largest travel show in the UK, so that’s something. I’ll just have to do better next time around.

You can see the winning entries here:

2009 Wanderlust Travel Photo of the Year winners gallery

On a positive note my photo in the shortlisted gallery now has the correct name.

We came back from Waikanae yesterday afternoon to find the Hutt Valley lined with smoke. I drove down the Eastern Hutt Road and we came around a corner to see a helicopter flying over the hills above Naenae. Pulling over we got out and watched with a small crowd of people as fireman pushed through burnt scrub up on the hill, heading towards the clouds of billowing smoke. The helicopter would swoop around the hill, fly to the smoldering source and dump a load of water before flying off to refill.

The smoke would occassionally part to reveal tall flames, the fire apparently reaching a new spot of dry wood. We stayed for a while, driving off to try and see where the helicopter was refilling but failing as all the nearby roads were blocked. The fire was under control as night fell.

The Wanderlust Travel Photo of the Year award winners are announced this Friday (UK time) and they’ve put the shortlisted entries up on their website. You can see all the entries from this page:

http://www.wanderlust.co.uk/photography

My photo is shown under the Icon section, mine is sixth in the gallery. Hopefully they’ll fix it but for now I’ve had a change I was unaware of and am credited as Brenda Doran. I have emailed asking for an edit to be done.