The Annual ISM Photography Competition began in October and ran until the first week of November, giving all of our community’s photographers one month to channel their creative juices.
This year’s theme was to ‘see’ and not just ‘look’, in order to ‘find the beauty in the everyday’. This theme was deliberately chosen in order to give photographers the freedom to take pictures of anything they thought suitable and to encourage them to use photography in an artistic way. Photography is, after all:
However, there were some regulations in place. For example, selfies were not permitted, as this would limit the idea of exploring the world around us to see the beauty in the everyday.
There were also limitations on image manipulation. Some simple editing techniques, such as cropping and adjusting brightness and contrast were permitted, as these have always been possible since the days of chemical photography and working in the darkroom. However, there was to be no use of filters or other more advanced digital editing techniques. These rules provided equal opportunities for photographers who did not have access to photo manipulation software. It was hoped this would also ensure the entrants focussed on more creative photography techniques, such as experimenting with composition and lighting.
There was a record number of entries this year from students of all Houses and teachers. The entries were of an exceptionally high quality. This meant that the job of the judges was exceptionally difficult. Judges had to review the criteria of how winners were awarded. Instead of choosing just one winner per Phase, an additional House points competition was added to to encourage more entries to be recognised for their outstanding merit.
Tutors from each tutor group chose the best among their group’s entries. These were then considered by the Heads of House who chose a winner for their respective Houses. These winners earned House points. The overall winners were chosen by the team of Art and Photography teachers and announced in assemblies on Friday the 23rd of November. Art Teacher Alexey Sinkevich awarded the winning entries and said:
WINNER OF SAXONS HOUSE – UPPER SECONDARY - Sergey Ponomorenko
WINNER OF VIKING HOUSE – UPPER SECONDARY - Darina Gencheva
WINNER OF ROMAN HOUSE - UPPER SECONDARY - Elizabeth McEwan
WINNER OF NORMAN HOUSE - UPPER SECONDARY - Celena Ota
WINNERs OF LOWER PRIMARY - Isabella Stewart, Ahjin Kim and Mona Micic
JUDGES CHOICE PRIZE – UPPER SECONDARY - Anna Kazanceva
JUDGES CHOICE PRIZE – LOWER CAMPUS - Sophie Watkins
JUDGES CHOICE PRIZE – STAFF - Carly Wilding Reid
Through the lenses of our young, budding, keen eyed photographers the world seems just that little bit more inviting and different. We hope that you will enjoy perusing the photographs as much as we did.
Huge thanks must also go out to all tutors and house leaders involved in judging the competition as well as Polina Iakovleva, our Year 13 Media Prefect and our Media Teacher, Briony Brooks, for organising the competition.
