WPOTY Exhibition

Walked into town visited the Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery where the Wildlife Photographer Of The Year exhibition is currently being hosted. I was going to visit after the launch of the Public Places exhibition but only had 30 mins so I decided to leave it until another time. As I went to the desk in the Information Centre/Shop I asked for a ticket and the staff member behind the counter asked if I had any reason to be concession in terms of age disability etc, and I mentioned I had a Student Art Pass. This should get me some discount off the full price and when she saw it she noticed the name on it and then told me that it was her that had bought my picture from the Public Places exhibition.

Her name is Emma and she told me that she was first attracted to the picture due to it’s size and colours. The blue colour and its intensity along with the shapes of the curves and the straight lines. I was very grateful to her for purchasing the picture and she then told me that she loves brutalism and most of the pictures on the walls in her house are flowery and this picture of a blind will compliment and balance the rest of images in the house. She also said that it was a bit big but they would somehow make it work. After thanking her again and having a chat about photography I went for a wander around the exhibition.

Upon being introduced to the exhibition by the volunteer or staff member and walking into the room I realised immediately that I had seen the works of art before at the Wolverhampton Art Gallery back in November. I had a good walk around though and revisited the images and they were superb. The photos were mounted on di-bond and stuck to the walls and looked as though they were great quality prints but they were not on light boxes as they had been in the Wolves version. They were not poorer photos for not being on a lightbox and I found it easier to look at them for longer periods of time and look deeper into the details.

There was also a TV screen in the room that was showing four short videos of behind the scenes for some of the photographs. There was a video about the Anteater Orphans that were from a project following the animals currently struggling in their home area by a major road passing through their pathways etc. It was quite emotional and showed the photographer working side by side with the animal care teams.

Another video showed a group of National History Museum and photography experts discussing the winning photo in the Young WPOTY which featured a beetle looking across a clearing towards some monstrous logging equipment. The discussions around the environment and the way that humans are impacting the whole of the earth were interesting and shows how much this is a consideration in the judging criteria for the exhibition. The image by Andrea Dominizi is a stunner though and well worth its winning position.

The main winner was a photo of a brown hyena captured using a motion sensor to trip the camera and it shows the rarely seen animal in front of an abandoned building in the deserted town of Kolmanskop in Namibia. Titled Ghost Town Visitor, by Wim van den Heever the image is astounding and in the video Wim recounts that this was one of three photos from the night that had tripped. The colours of the light around the building are amazing and the light on the hyena is a colder blueish light. He shot this with two flashes and there was also a security light to contend with in the area. The misty appearance comes from a mist rolling in with the differences in the temperatures.

The exhibition is worth the cost of entry and I’d heartily recommend it, hell I might even see if I can create an entry for next year. There were some other great photos there also, and my favourite was a photo of an owl’s eye in a dark frame with a bit of motion blur by Philipp Egger. The mood of it reminds me of a Francis Bacon painting and Batman comic books by Grant Morrisson. The eye and the light on the beak tells us that this is an owl and rather than the wise old creature of our childhoods it presents a foreboding and menacing presence.

Public Places

After leaving the exhibition and heading out I thought that I might go to the Public Places exhibition and check out the video that Phil Scoggins from the Shrewsbury Civic Society has written and narrated. It was interesting to find out that there used to be a big pool in the area of the square in the centre of town, where the older Shirehalls used to be before it moved out of town in the 1960s.

I made a few photos of my work still hanging on the wall and tried capturing my video too that is playing on the wall above the scale model from the 1960s. I watched the video made a couple of pictures of the model and then headed off into the town centre for a bit of Street photography before heading off home.