The world is really very big. This is sometimes easy to forget.

For every landmark we could list, there are thousands of natural and urban settings so extraordinary in their ordinariness.

At Head On we know The Landscape Prize is about so much more than your average sunset.

It’s about what you see around you – nature, cities, space. We want to see those amazing spaces in which you first encountered new people, experiences or foreign lands. We’re open to the landscapes you created from those hazy memories of days gone by.

A great landscape photo lets the audience see something new. Whether it is a technically perfect shot of a far flung location or the reimagining of a mundane location through an artist’s eye. Our Landscape Prize encapsulates the spaces that we inhabit in both the real and the imaginary.

Stieglitz would never say that certain objects of the world were more or less beautiful than others-telegraph poles, for instance, compared with oak trees…

Sometimes the beauty comes from the singularity of the moment it depicts.
2013 finalist Torsten Blackwood’s “Taste of Paradise” says “Getting one eruption in the frame is hard enough, but having two in the same frame is unlikely to be repeated in my lifetime.”

The 2015 Landscape finalists will be exhibited at the Parliament of New South Wales. The first prize in our landscape category is A$5000 plus camera equipment worth over A$5000. Second is worth A$2500 and the third is worth A$2000. All are open internationally. The $5000 “NSW Parliament Prize” is for a NSW image. It’s an acquisitive prize, which means the print of the winning image will be retained by NSW Parliament to use and display “for the current and future benefit of the people of NSW.”

The parameters of a ‘landscape’ image are as broad as vast as the planet it covers.

We think Peter Solness, 2014 Parliament of NSW Landscape Photography winner, said it best…
‘I honestly didn’t expect to win as I thought it was too abstract. It just goes to show you that you can’t predict what sort of image will resonate with the judges.
I reckon if you like a photo just put it in the competition.’


 

Image Credit: Torsten Blackwood, Peter Solness

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Head On Photo Awards 2024

Entries to the Head On Photo Awards 2024 open in May/June.

Image detail: Gary Ramage