Wauchope man Andy Smith’s love of nature and photography has paid off.
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He’s won Australian Photography magazine’s Landscape Photographer of the year.
Andy, who only took up photography four years ago, is proud of his achievement and particularly pleased with the judges’ comments.
The judges said Andy’s photographs stood out, and that he had mastered a classic approach to landscapes.
They praised his keen eye for detail, his sense of composition and his careful weighting of objects.
‘I’m just a bit of a nature-lover. Mum was into photography. I started off taking happy snaps and progressed from there,” he said.
Andy’s dad, Brian was the Wauchope fire captain for 40 years. Mum Elaine is a librarian at Wauchope High School.
Andy studied art at school and four years ago, he bought his first camera and began joining photography groups on Facebook and meeting local enthusiasts.
“There’s a lot of talent in the Hastings area. We have got really good backdrops and great places to take photos of. The area lends itself to it really well,” says Andy.
He’s entered a few competitions and picked up a few awards, but this is the first first one he’s won outright.
He put a series of four photos in, two from New Zealand and two from Australia.
In January, they told him he was on the shortlist, and then the magazine came out and he’d won. The prize was $1,000 and a computer monitor for photography.
Andy says he always tries to convey a sense of drama in his images, with powerful foregrounds, and moody skies.
“Straight after a storm is a good time to take photos,” he says.
Andy’s day job is as a boilermaker at a company in Sancrox, and much of his spare time is spent on his favourite hobby.
He loves taking photographs so much that he and his partner travel as often as they can.
“She’s not as keen on photographs as I am,” he says with a smile.
You can see more of Andy’s superb pictures on his Facebook page, Andy Smith Images.