Australians take out four of five awards in international comp
Australian photographer David Sinclair won the Polar category award(Image credit: David Sinclair / Frank Hurley Photography Awards)
The winners of the first ever Frank Hurley Photography Awards were recently announced, and a lot of Australian photographers received top accolades. With the exception of the overall competition winner – which was taken by American photographer Jason Gulley – all other categories of the international comp were won by Aussies.
The awards are named after Australian photographer James 'Frank' Hurley (1885–1962), who's best known for his images depicting adventure and exploration, with the Awards' various categories reflecting those themes.
For taking out the top accolade, Florida-based Jason Gulley won an all-expenses paid cruise expedition to Antartica, along with other prizes valued at about AU$20,000, for his winning image entitled Cenote Angelina Cloud taken at the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico.
American photographer Jason Gulley's winning image (Image credit: Jason Gulley / Frank Hurley Photography Awards)
Jason's image also won the Portrait of Adventure category – one of five categories in the Frank Hurley Photography Awards.
The other categories included Nature and Wildlife, won by South Australian photographer Andrew Dickman with his image entitled Flight of the Penguins and Polar, won by Tasmanian photographer David Sinclair with his image of a polar bear on an ice sheet (pictured above).
The Frank Hurley Photography Awards is the brainchild of the people at Mawson's Huts Foundation, a non-profit organisation dedicated to conserving the buildings of the same name located in Antarctica, where geologist and explorer Sir Douglas Mawson stayed when he led the Australasian Antarctic Expedition between 1911-1914. Hurley accompanied Mawson on the expedition as its official photographer.
The funds raised via the photography competition will go towards preserving the only remaining hut at Cape Denison in East Antarctica, and it's already pulled in a huge amount of international interest in its inaugural year. Thousands of entries were received from 26 countries, with subsequent competitions to be held every alternate year.
All finalist entries are available to view online at the Frank Hurley Photography Awards website. If you'd like to see them all in person, they are currently displayed at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in Hobart, and will be there until the end of February 2021.
In addition to looking after they day-to-day functioning of Digital Camera World in Australia, Sharmishta is the Managing Editor (APAC) for TechRadar as well, and helps produce two of Future's photography print magazines Down Under. Her passion for photography started when she was wandering the wilds of India studying monkeys (yes, life took a sharp turn somewhere along the way) and is entirely self-taught. That puts her in the unique position of understanding what a beginner or enthusiast is looking for in a camera or lens, and writes to help those like her on their path to developing their skills or finding the best gear. While she experiments with quite a few genres of photography, her main area of interest is nature photography – wildlife, landscapes and macro. She still prefers an optical viewfinder but is utterly fascinated with what mirrorless technology has been able to achieve.
With an ear to the ground in the Asia-Pacific territory, she is constantly on top of camera news and breaking developments in the Australian region, in addition to sourcing local deals during big retail events like Amazon Prime Day and Black Friday / Cyber Monday.
She’s also a skilled stargazer, always eager to share astrophotography tips such as photographing the blood moon without even using a tripod!
