Stunning beauty of gardens both great and small captured by Photographer of the Year winners
June Sharpe has won the overall prize in the annual International Garden Photographer of the Year contest, which is now in its 17th year. Her inventive image, was of a conifer trees shot in a Kent, England - but transformed into an abstract, wallpaper-like pattern.
"The layered branches of this conifer reminded me of the dancing cranes often featured in Japanese woodcuts," she tells us. But the effect, which also won her the 7iM Abstract Views category was achieved in Photoshop. "I added a fill layer and used exclusion blending mode to alter the colors and enhance the feeling of movement and sense of the ‘birds’ dancing in a fantasy woodland".
The image itself was shot with a Canon EOS 5D Mark III with Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM lens, using an exposure of 1/350sec at f/5.6, ISO 800.
The separate RPS Portfolio category prize was won by Annaick Guitteny with a sequence of six square images of close-ups of plants, covered in water droplets.
The eight other category winners are pictured below…
See the IGPOTY website for the full rundown of the winners and runners-up - and for details of this year's contest, which is now open for entries.
A selection of the current winners is currently on display at Kew Gardens in London until March 10, before moving on to Cambridge University Botanic Garden, where the exhibition will be on display from March 20 until May 7.
