Winners announced: Landscape Photographer of the Year

I’m currently working on our next art gallery exhibition, which is a little different to previous exhibitions. We’re working with the Take a view Landscape Photographer of the Year competition to showcase some stunning railway photography. The Network Rail Lines in the Landscape category of the awards has been hotly contested since 2010, and our exhibition will showcase the winning and commended entries from the last four years. This will be the first time that all of the railway images have been shown together.

Earlier this week the winners were announced, so I can give you a sneak preview of some of the images that will be in the exhibition.

The 2013 overall winner of the Lines in the Landscape category was this fantastic image of Scots Guardsman on the Forth Bridge by David Cation.


Caught in a Web of Iron, David Cation
“The Forth Rail Bridge had recently been repainted and I timed this visit to North Queensferry to coincide with the crossing of a steam train. This was the scene as Scots Guardsman hauled its carriages north over the bridge early one morning. I was drawn to the finesse of the details within the massive structure and chose the gap in the bracing to frame the locomotive.”


Two of the commended entries chose the same landscape, but feature different elements of the railways. The first is Dafydd Whyles’ classic view of the Ribblehead Viaduct.


Classic train and classic architecture, Dafydd Whyles
The iconic Ribblehead Viaduct on the Settle and Carlisle railway line is crossed by an A4 steam locomotive on a charter. The entire scene is dwarfed by the massive sky at sunset.


And the second shows what happens when a photographer has one shot in mind, but gets a very different result.


Heading for the Viaduct, Robert France
“A Northern Rail Sprinter passes Ingleborough and heads towards Ribblehead Viaduct at sunset in late November. I’d intended to take some silhouettes of the viaduct but as I was setting up my tripod the train approached, and I took a few shots of it running towards the viaduct. It wasn’t the shot I’d originally intended to take but it is much better than the rest.”


The exhibition Lines in the Landscape opens on Thursday 21 November, and runs until 5 May 2014.

For more information on the awards see take-a-view.co.uk.

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Filed under: Image collections, Museum news Tagged: Forth Rail Bridge, locos, photography, Ribblehead Viaduct, scots guardsman

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