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2008 Cottage Life Photo Contest Winners   

Category: Nature

 

nature 1

First prize

Season’s end

Avid photographer David McDougall came across this striking little tableau while walking with his kids along the Muskoka River in Huntsville. “The leaf was floating by and I stopped it. I was trying to take pictures as it was moving, but it was too fast!”

Judges’ comments
There’s a lot going on in this photo, yet there’s an amazing stillness to it. The composition and the quality of light are exceptional. The leaf looks like it’s somehow lit from within. We love the glossy, half-submerged rocks. If those rocks weren’t there, the photo wouldn’t have the same dimension, and the image wouldn’t be nearly as powerful.

 

 

Second prize

Hello, hopper

“I have a little daughter now, so I basically have a camera on me all the time,” says Anna Maciel-Burandt. Which is why the Healey Lake, Ont., cottager could snap photos of this grasshopper before it jumped off the dock. For interest, she chose not to centre the critter in the shot. “It tells more of a story that way.”

Judges’ comments
We agree. It’s as if the grasshopper’s a character in a children’s book, peeking out at us from the margin. There’s crisp detail, but with the soft depth of field to pull us in. Plus, the colour is great—all muted except for the green. It’s a simple image, but it’s not dull.

 nature 2

 

 

nature 3

Third prize

Abstract art

“I’ve never had a shot that was so clear, so close up,” says Alannah Virtanen, who used a macro lens—for taking photos at close range—to capture this monarch butterfly as it emerged from its chrysalis at her family’s Lake Nipissing cottage. “I carry my macro lens everywhere. It allows for a completely different view.”

Judges’ comments
This is a really good, creative shot. We’re thrilled someone photographed a monarch like this, as an abstract subject. A macro lens lets you become aware of the separate components of an object as you get closer to it, and Alannah made excellent use of that.

 

 

 

 

Winter 2008 cover

All the winners are published in the Winter 2008 issue of Cottage Life, on newsstands November 3, 2008.