‘Icons of Myanmar’ photo awards announced

Aung Htay Hlaing (left) stands in front of his winning photograph “Rays” as he talks to photographer Zaw Min Yu at Gallery 65 on July 15. Pic: Lwin Maung Maung

THE winners of the “Icons of Myanmar” travel photography competition were announced on July 15 at Yangon’s Gallery 65, where selected photos from the contest were also displayed from July 12 to 17.

The four-member panel of judges comprised photographer Zaw Min Yu, film director Aung Ko Latt, Canon Club managing director Mr Alvin Law, and Ko Aung Htin Aung from the competition’s organiser, Logistics Media.

The panel selected 50 finalists for the exhibition, from more than 213 entries by 58 photographers.

The first prize — a Canon 1100D DSLR camera — went to Aung Htay Hlaing for his photographs “Rays”, taken in Bagan in 2009.

Aung Htay Hlaing said he was interested in capturing the light in one of Myanmar’s main tourist attractions.

“It took about two days to get the photo,” he told The Myanmar Times at the exhibition.

“On the first day, I monitored the situation of the light and determined that the best time was between 1pm and 2pm. The sun changed position very quickly, so there was a very short time to catch the right moment and get the lighting I wanted.”

He said he set out to avoid the most common subjects of Myanmar photographers.

“As you know, monks and nuns are the favourite subjects of photographers here. I’m bored with those kinds of subjects, so I invited a child who makes lacquerware in a village near the pagoda to pose for my photograph.”

Aung Htay Hlaing’s winning photograph will be used for the cover of the next edition of the Myanmar Hotels and Tourism Directory, published by Logistics Media.

The K500,000 second prize went to Dr Shu Maung for his photo “Learning to Be Wise”, while Htay Htay Winn took third (K200,000) with the entry “Inthar in Inle Lake”.

Five special consolation prizes of K30,000 and Canon vouchers each were awarded, and the rest of the finalists were given K20,000 consolation prizes.

Aung Ko Latt said he hoped such competitions would help amateur photographers become more professional.

“Competitions are good opportunities for amateurs, and we would welcome more of them. Nowadays, you can take a photo with just one click and easily improve it with Photoshop. I would like to see people avoid this and take real photographs,” he said.

Zaw Min Yu, who has been taking photos for Lonely Planet Images since 1996, agreed that too many photographers enhanced their images with Photoshop. He estimated that only abut 10 percent of the images he saw were free from manipulation.

“The sky is too blue. The grass is very green. The sunset scenes are too red. Mostly, I find photographs to be oversaturated with colour … For travel photography, most images like this are useless and unnatural,” he said.

“I’ve heard from some photographers that saturated photos can win local competitions because judges in Myanmar like those kinds of images. That’s the wrong idea, and those photos would be automatically rejected from international competitions.”

The competition was organised by Logistics Media and partially sponsored by Canon.