Wide variety of images bloom in garden contest
THE INTERNATIONAL Garden Photographer of the Year (IGPOTY) has become one of the more interesting major photo competitions, as it encompasses much more than close- ups of plants and gardens. 2019’s IGPOTY winners didn’t fail to disappoint, with overall winner Jill Welham from North Yorkshire taking top honours for a very striking and creative image of allium heads – as Jill explained in a recent Big Picture (AP 16 February), she took the picture using the wet cyanotype process.
There were plenty of other noteworthy category winners in this year’s IGPOTY, which included 13 categories, and attracted around 19,000 entries from more than 50 countries. The competition’s diversity is reflected in ‘Greenbelt’ by Halu Chow from Hong Kong, which won the Greening the City category. Chow used infrared to pick out the precious areas of green space in one of the world’s most crowded conurbations, Hong Kong. The winner of the Breathing Spaces category, meanwhile, could have also triumphed in a landscape photography competition. ‘ The sun had already risen and the dawn had been incredible,’ said winner Andrea Pozzi from Italy, of his image (above) taken at the Torres Del Paine National Park in Patagonia, Chile. ‘[It left] behind a unique intimate feeling amongst one of the most beautiful mountain ranges on earth.’ See the full list of winners and details of how to enter the competition at igpoty.com.