SENIOR SCHOOL
RJ Pollard : Junior Landscape Photographer of the Year
Taken atop Fox Glacier , New Zealand , looking towards the Mt Tasman Peak , shrouded by clouds .
RJ Pollard is a Year 12 student , a Prefect and Australian Photography Magazine ’ s Junior Landscape Photographer of the Year !
The 2015 Photographer of the Year competition is open to amateur and professional photographers from Australia and New Zealand . This year , for the first time , a Junior category was included in the competition . Even though RJ has been taking photos since he was in Year 8 , he hadn ’ t entered any competitions or displayed his photos anywhere , but he decided he would enter this competition and see how he went .
RJ submitted a portfolio of six images , which was a requirement of entry so that the judges could assess how well-rounded the photographer was . RJ ’ s entry was one of over 1000 portfolios and 6070 images entered into the competition . The rest , as they say , is history ! guitar for the first time and starts writing music – they learn chords , jam to some of their favourite songs and get a feel for the craft first . In my opinion the same goes for photography . Let yourself be inspired by what you like to look at then form a Frankenstein monster out of it and mould it into your own style . Personally I took inspiration from two Luminism painters in Frederic Church and Albert Bierstadt . From that I tend to create images with strong foregrounds , warm backlight , a nonobvious visual path and a colour palette that resonates throughout the scene .”
RJ ’ s interest in photography came about quite by chance , when he picked up a DSLR that was lying around the house and started experimenting with what he could capture . After trying several different formats , he found his niche in landscape photography .
For those keen on improving their photography , RJ feels it is important to be fueled by inspiration . “ Nobody picks up a
RJ Pollard : A personal favourite of mine would have to be this image I captured at Cathedral Cove , New Zealand , not only because of the epic location , but also because of how perfectly everything went . I had spent the days prior constantly checking forecasts and cloud charts and it looked promising that the storm clouds would clear at first light . Leaving at 2.00am I made my way towards the Coromandel Peninsula , hiking through complete darkness and rain . After getting down the cliffs I found I had the stretch of coast all to myself and decided to post up inside this cave until sunrise . The storm quietened , the sun peaked over the horizon and rainbows appeared .
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