Once again … for the third year … delighted to be asked to judge the annual Trinity Bay High School “Photographic Portrait Prize”.
Once again I was mightily impressed by the work of these talented photography students under the tutelage of the dedicated Trinity Bay visual arts teaching staff. The standard of entries this year exceeded the already high standard of previous years (2017 here and 2016 here)… and that made the judging decision making that much harder.
Eventually, I decided on a Winner, second, third and four highly commended … plus a couple of mentions for the seperate ‘staff’ prize.
Grade 12 student Lit Thao … who has a hearing and communication impairment … won third prize in last years Portrait Prize. There is no doubt that his visual communication skills are extraordinary. This year his image “Angry Man” stared out from amongst the other sixty odd works on the exhibition walls .. and dragged you in. I had little hesitation in awarding his work the winner of the Nikon D3400 DSLR prize sponsored by Garricks Camera House in Cairns.
Not far behind was the Mona Lisa-esque work of grade 11 student Kimberley Burns entitled “Portrait of Ruby”. In both these images the eyes of the subject seem to follow the viewer around the room.
Third place went to a more abstract, creative, but nonetheless intriguing work … “Portrait of Livio” … by Greta Beluffi. Greta is also a grade 11 student.
Out of the four Highly Commended works I selected … Vika Latu’s “Nostalgia in August”, Madison Robinson’s “Truth Behind the Smile”, Laura Saavedra’s “In the South” and Elise Mcatamney’s “Untiled”… one deserves an extra special mention. Elise (her work is bottom below) is just a grade 7 student. Remarkably three works different from my selection tied for the “Peoples Choice” award.
If you are a Cairns resident and interested in our talented budding photo artists try and get along to the Photographic Prize exhibition at Trinity Bay High School.
Below … from top … Winner – “Angry Man” by Lit Thao, Second – “Portrait of Ruby” by Kimberley Burns, Third – “Portrait of Livio” by Greta Beluffi, Highly Commended (1 of 4) – “Untitled” by Elise Macatamney (grade 7). Works © the individual artists.
