Wild about photography

From amazing animals to peculiar plants, the Otago Wildlife Photography Competition has attracted a range of stunning images in the past 10 years. Kim Dungey reports.

Otago's natural beauty and abundant wildlife have proved a great source of inspiration for people entering the Otago Wildlife Photography Competition in the past decade.

The amateur photography competition was born from the belief that an exhibition of wildlife photos by Otago people could be just as popular as an international wildlife photography competition, held regularly at Otago Museum from the late 1990s.

In 2000, the inaugural Otago Wildlife Photography Competition was given a trial alongside the international one, and within a few years the local one was proving the more popular.

Visitor programmfes co-ordinator Emma Burns says the competition has become one of the region's most popular photography contests and the quality of the images is "fantastic".

Entries have grown from 367 the first year to more than 800 in the past few years and a record 1100 two years ago.

Of the three subject categories - animals, plants, and human impact on the environment - the first is by far the biggest, perhaps because people are drawn to animals and because Otago has such an "amazing array" of wildlife, Miss Burns says.

However, the competition has also shown that Otago people are widely travelled: "This year we've got some awesome photos of Madagascar and of New Zealand ferns growing in Edinburgh".

Some category winners have gone on to have other successes, she says. Dmitry Sharomov is a photographer for Greenpeace while Shanna Verhoef (13) was recently awarded a cultural scholarship to Bayfield High School based on her photography portfolio, and won the primary/intermediate category in a national photography competition run by Habitat for Humanity.

The past decade has been an interesting period in photography, with a large number of entries received in 2007, as many people changed from film to digital cameras, she adds.

Digital cameras mean people can be their own critics, reviewing their images immediately instead of waiting for films to be developed, and making improvements if necessary.

This year there is more than usual at stake, with the 2009 winner also earning the chance to vie with previous winners to be named the amateur Otago Wildlife Photographer of the Decade. In the first two years, the competition included a professional category but those winners are not eligible for the title.

Winners will be announced on Wednesday night, with the best photos from both this year and the past decade being exhibited in the museum's 1877 Gallery until late November.