Hey people...

Remember uncle John?

THAT'S RIGHT! MY UNCLE JOHN!!!

HE WON! HE WON!

Now...if only he submitted my picture instead!



The young photographer of the year


By Ian Tan
12 May 2007

THERE'S plenty of artistic talent in this small island, but they just need a bit of coaxing to come out of the woodwork.

And more importantly, they need opportunities and guidance to develop their skills.

That's why Canon and The New Paper decided to hold a unique photography competition that was not simply about offering good prizes (of which $10,000 worth of Canon gear is nothing to sniff at).

Topmost on our minds was giving undiscovered talent a chance to showcase some of their best works, and provide the winner an opportunity to work alongside Singapore's best photojournalists in The New Paper's Photo Desk.

The call for entries began in early March, and today, after going through nearly 1,000 submissions and over 4GB of images, Canon and The New Paper are proud to announce we have found our first Young Photographer Of The Year.

He is Mr John Heng, a 28-year-old freelance sailing instructor and photographer.

Even though he's only been into photography seriously for a year, his results came through very clearly.

How did we pick him from the crowd? Well, let me first describe the method before the madness.

It took us weeks to whittle the tsunami of entries to about 30 semi-finalists, and several more judging rounds to decide on the final eight.

Last Saturday, we put the finalists through a gruelling shootout in the afternoon.

The brief was simple - they had three hours in town to bring back three different photos depicting the themes of Scenery, People and Action each.

They were asked to choose their best three images, but as all photo editors know, the young photographer often needs an objective eye to judge his work.

Our judging panel from Canon and TNP's Photo Dept went through all the photos they shot that day to decide the winner.

Said Mr Andrew Koh, Canon's general manager of consumer imaging and information division: 'John had the best shots taken under the extreme time pressure of three hours.

'When you look at his shots, he clearly shoots with his heart and his mind. His pictures tell compelling stories.

'As for the rest of the finalists, their pictures are good and we see potential in many of them.'

Said Mr Jonathan Choo, executive photojournalist at TNP: 'John didn't just 'aim and shoot', we saw that he had already pre-visualised his photos before shooting them.'

AND FOR THEIR EFFORTS...

Mr Heng wins a Canon EOS 30D dSLR body, 3 pro-level prime lenses (24mm, 50mm, 100mm macro), a 430EX flash and a Pixma Pro9000 A3-sized photo printer worth over $5,000 in all. Also, he will be serving a four-week TNP photography internship.

As for the runners-up, Mr Ng Wei Chean, 31, wins a Canon EOS 400D dSLR kit. MsErnany Siregar Jasmin, 21, and Mr Mike Chee, 32, both win a EOS 350D dSLR kit.

The other finalists were Mr Linus Chai, Mr Mohd Juffrie, Ms Sit Weng San and Mr Cai Jinyuan.

Congratulations to all finalists for making it this far, and thank you to everyone else who participated in this initiative.