International Garden Photographer of the Year – Competition

Just a short posting to share some good news:
My photograph of Sunnyside garden pond, entered for IGPOTY (International Garden Photographer of the Year) competition organized in UK by the famous KEW Gardens, competing with a few thousands of other images from around the world has been just nominated in finals to be among  handful of “Highly Commended” photographs. The exact list of winners will be announced in May.

Here is information we just received:
Dear Derek, Congratulations.
Your photograph has got through to the very last round of judging and is now Highly Commended. Winners will be announced at the beginning of May. All of the photographs have been reviewed over a 10 week period by some of the leading garden photographers in the world, as well as representatives of Kew Gardens, the National Trust and the Royal Photographic Society.

You have taken part in the world’s premier garden photography event and competed against the best in the world, and to have won an award is a great achievement.

Highly Commended photographs will be shown on the International Garden Photographer of the Year website. Each highly commended photograph will feature in the book ‘International Garden Photographer of the Year Collection.
The exhibition will open at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew on May 14th. There will be follow on exhibitions through to 2012 at Wakehurst Place, Lacock Abbey, Ironbridge, Shropshire, and Exeter.The book of awarded images will be published to coincide with the opening of the exhibition in May.
http://www.igpoty.com/competition04/Commended_GardenViews.asp?parent=commended

This photo was taken for our book Exotic Gardens of the Eastern Caribbean, so these of you who own the book can see it in large size on page 176.
I will keep you posted as soon as we know more. Thanks for visiting our blog!
Cheers! Until next time!
Derek

Lets see what’s behind us…

I did not post anything for a while. I guess, we were really busy. Thing is, we were quite busy for a while, for a long while. sometimes too busy to see a wider picture of what’s around us.
So, lets stop for a moment and see… what really happened to us in 2010?

Last year was an enormous adventure both for Margaret and myself, and to these friends who worked closely with us.
We made new friends – some quite unexpectedly, we published two books, we received Benjamin Franklin award for our Tropical Homes of the Eastern Caribbean, we published a limited edition Caribbean wall calendar…
We travelled to St Lucia and Dominica twice, then also to Barbados, Martinique, Grenada, Jamaica, Honduras, Panama, Mexico… you  name it! My head still spins when I think about all our flights.
I also took about 20,000 photographs, and Margaret recorded over 60 hours of interviews…
We did some fine work for top Caribbean resorts, including images, advertising brochure and a web site for an elegant hotel.
I had a photo exhibition sponsored by Polish Consulate in Vancouver, Canada (really enjoyable event!), entered two prestigious international photography competitions, and  our new book Exotic Gardens of the Eastern Caribbean was accepted for two fine book competitions. We had several radio talk-shows, and displayed our titles on several Book fairs, including famous Book fair on Frankfurt, Germany. As a result of that – we signed contract with a British distributor for distribution of our titles in UK, Europe and Middle East.
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We started working on another fascinating book (working title is Caribbean Architect), and we are quite advanced, hoping to publish it sometimes this year.

As we are recently waiting for some vital materials necessary to finish this book, we do have a little “time off” now.

But it does not mean we just took vacation. I am exploring and learning other styles of photography, and perfecting use of advanced lighting for portraiture and interiors. (you can see my personal site www.artphotographyservices.com  to see my recently added photographs).

So, while I did not report anything in last two months, hopefully my new images on the above web site will compensate you for my silence. Been busy, sorry.
2010 had been a Ride Of Our Lifetime!
I will keep in touch though, and for now I am posting Margaret’s newest portrait we just did over this weekend. Hope you’ll enjoy!