Whilst I was recently travelling through India and Bangladesh I received the fantastic news that I was one of the winners of Wanderlust's 2018 Photo of the Year competition.
One of my favourite images taken on a previous trip to Cuba was the winner of the 'Travel Icons' category. My photo taken of a brightly coloured pink classic car in front of a white Orthodox Church taken on the seafront of Havana took the prize!
Here’s what one of the judges had to say about my image:
“A classic car with an extra splash of photographic flair. We loved the originality of this: the low viewpoint, the water splashed up by the wheels. Crucially for the composition, there’s space for the car to drive into (giving it a sense of motion) and no other colour to compete with that pink.”
For the prize I will be flying to Hong Kong and Macao for a photo commission supported by the Hong Kong Tourism Board and Macao Government Tourism Office. I am extremely excited about this as I have never been to those destinations and always enjoy traveling to new places. So… more pictures to follow later on this year! My winning photo has also been used as the header banner on the Wanderlust results page which can only be good for further publicity.
I rarely enter competitions because you often have to pay, and I rarely win! However, it just goes to show that the extra effort involved can often be worth it in the end! I thought that the entries to the Wanderlust photo of the year competition were amazing, you can view the beautiful winning entries here for some inspiration.
My winning Cuban image was previously selected for a travel exhibition at the PhotoPlace Gallery in Vermont, the photo also gathered a lot of praise on social media so I had a feeling it was a well liked photograph. A trip to Cuba can produce a treasure chest of travel images, I wrote a couple of previous photography blogs about my time in Havana including ‘Cuba and Cigars’ and one on the many colourful characters to be found there.
More of my travel photography from Cuba can be found on my website, my Facebook and my Flickr account. Several of my Cuban travel images are available as prints. If you are interested in purchasing any prints, using an image online or would like further information please send me an email at: geraintrowlandphotography@gmail.com.