Release Date: 7 April 2005
The winners of the 2004/2005 Fujifilm Student Awards have been announced. Norman Willcox from Bridgend College was named Fujifilm Student Photographer of the Year. Norman receives £1,000 for winning the overall prize and a further £1,000 for his first place in the Advertising/Commercial category.
The winner of the Social/Editorial category was Daniel Kitwood from Norton College in Sheffield. Iris Uffen from Falmouth College of Arts won first place in the Fine Art/Pictorial section. Daniel and Iris receive £1,000 each.
Norman was understandably delighted with his win: “I'm really pleased to have won the Award, though I must confess to not believing the person who told me - I thought it was an early April Fool's joke! I'm a mature student who came into photography following a career in IT, so the Award is really special to me and, hopefully, it will help me progress in my new career as a photographer.”
Norman explained the background to his winning image: “The building in the photograph is the water tower next to the Millennium Centre in Cardiff. I remember thinking when I took the shot that the light coming in on the east, and the darkness on the west, combined with the vapour trail of the jet, made a really striking image. I'm just coming to the end of a two year National BTEC Diploma in photography and my tutor used the Awards as an assignment as part of our course.”
Each winner's college is presented with £500 in Fujifilm Professional product vouchers. The college that submitted the most Merit winning images is Norton College in Sheffield, which totaled six out of the total 54 Merits awarded. For this, Norton College collect another £500 in Fujifilm Professional product vouchers, in addition to their category prize.
This year was the first time entries to the Student Awards have been received online, which resulted in a record number of submissions, with over 4,300 images being submitted to www.fujifilmstudentawards.co.uk over the past academic year.
The Student Awards follow a similar format to the successful Distinctions Awards that Fujifilm Professional has run since 2002. All initial entries are sent via the Internet from where Merits are awarded. Merit winners are then asked to submit a print for final judging.
Glen Taylor from Taylor James photographic retouchers was the judge in the Advertising & Commercial category; he had this to say on the standard of entries: “From a striking still life of a fried egg to a vast mountainous landscape, what particularly impressed me with this year's entries was the diverse range of work submitted. Judging was made all the more difficult by the high standard many images were finished to.”
Commercial photographer, Tim Flach, judged the Fine Art/Pictorial section and Simon Bainbridge, editor of the British Journal of Photography was responsible for the Social/Editorial category.
Fujifilm will be accepting entries to the 2005/2006 Awards from 1 September 2005, closing date will be 31 January 2006.
The winning images are available from www.fujifilmstudentawards.co.uk
ENDS
* Note: this news release is issued electronically and will not be duplicated with a posted copy
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http://www.fujifilm.co.uk/professional
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