NI students top all-island photo competition

Four students from Northern Ireland have won awards at this year’s HP Digital Imagination photography competition, beating 6,300 entries across primary and secondary school students, North and South.

The students from Jordanstown School and Regent House Grammar School were presented with their awards at a gala ceremony in Dublin. These included three students with auditory impairment from Jordanstown School: Tommy Kelly, 10, won first prize for his photo depiction called ‘digital boy;' Sara Kelly, 9, was placed second for her creative image of colourful marbles; and Michael Hudson, 17, was placed third for his image ‘digital school bus’. Northern Ireland's Anna Moles, 17, from Regent House Grammar School who won second place in the discovery category for her digital photo called ‘car blur’.

Commenting at the prize giving ceremony, Billy Stickland, Managing Director of Inpho Photography and one of the judges of the Digital Imagination competition, said: “The standard of entries was noticeably higher than previous years and we were blown away by the calibre of photographs which we had to judge. In particular the standard of photo’s from Northern Ireland has produced four winners and fantastic pictures. It shows that you don't have to elaborate too much, all you need is an awareness of things that go on around you.”

As part of the award, each student will receive a HP Photosmart Digital Camera and Digital Printer as well as securing HP camera equipment for their school. The winning images will also be made available to a worldwide audience through the HP website.

The Digital Imagination competition aims to further the use of photography in homes and classrooms to inspire, delight and educate a new generation of students in a growing digital age.

The competition is sponsored by HP and eircom broadband and was open to over 4,200 schools on the island of Ireland. Students from primary, post primary and special needs schools had to take a picture using any type of camera under the competition themes of Discovery, Colour or Our World for primary schools; or Discovery, Identity or Diversity for post primary schools.

During the course of the year, HP and eircom ran a number of workshops for participating schools in Northern Ireland.

The events included photography tips and techniques, use of digital photography equipment, how to upload, store and create photo albums using broadband & submit entries on-line and an exploration of the competition themes.

(SP)