01-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Otago Daily Times
Photographer finds award-winning art in the mundane
International award success for a Ranfurly photographer proves, yet again, the Maniototo is far greater than the sum of its parts.
Landscape photographer Janyne Fletcher won three awards at the Australian Photographic Prize, an annual international competition which this year attracted more than 2500 entries from 21 countries.
The competition was judged on digital entries rather than prints.
Ms Fletcher said entering a digital competition was unusual for her as printing and framing her work was the icing on the cake in the process.
Her two entries won three awards — international aerial photographer of the year, international open photographer of the year and international creative photographer of the year.
The aerial photograph Winter's Gentle Hold, taken by drone, captured historical sheep yards in the snow. At first glance it could look like people lined up or embroidery.
The image won the New Zealand Institute of Professional Photographers Iris award for highest-scoring print last year.
It was likely anyone would drive past the yards and never notice them, Ms Fletcher said.
Her other winning entry, Abandoned Cityscape, was composed of scrap metal photographed in the Maniototo which was then digitally transformed into a cityscape.
She said she saw things differently to most people and was able to capture that vision, turning the mundane into art.
Judges in the Australian competition were drawn from across the world and looked for the impact of the image and the narrative.
However, being a landscape photographer meant her images did not have a strong narrative so the impact was even more important.
Ms Fletcher said she started out in Cromwell as a traditional photographer but her partner's love of his Maniototo home taught her to see it through his eyes.
She did not feel bound up in conventional expectations and loved the Maniototo community.
"There is a freedom here to have my own take on things."
Seeing things differently to others had been the strength of her 20-year career.
"It's how I live and breathe. I see more than just the landscape.
"It's quite abstract, that's me being me."
Being able to make a living from being a photographer was something few people were able to do, she said.
"I'm really privileged, that's all I do. It's unusual to be able to do that."
Next week she will be a judge at the New Zealand Institute of Professional Photographers awards.
While she could not judge her own work, she would be entering and was pleased it was a print, rather than digital, competition.
