Corkman wins prestigious international photo award
Brendan Ó Sé, who is an English language teacher at UCC, took first prize in the Photographer of the Year category at the iPhone Photography Awards — beating off competition from thousands of other images shot on the phone from all over the world.
Mr Ó Sé, shot the image with an iPhone 6S and said he took it on an early morning walk in Jakarta in Indonesia last year
“I shot this photo on an early morning photo walk around the docks in Jakarta in April 2016.
“These were the hands of a dock worker who was taking a break. I was struck by the texture created by the accumulated dirt on his hands,” he said.
In addition to winning awards in several international photography competitions, he was part of the original Apple World Gallery of images shot on iPhone 6 in 2015. His photograph of a street in Copenhagen was showcased on billboards and posters throughout the world.
The photograph was spotted on his Flickr account and after being contacted by Apple eventually led to being selected for the campaign.
“I ignored it, thinking it was spam. But they emailed again and, to my amazement, I saw the name Apple.
Big thanks to Serap - https://t.co/6fs8f2QoKd for sending these images of my Apple shot in Istanbul. #ShotOniPhone6 pic.twitter.com/QXoVvCn96q
— Brendan Ó Sé (@fotopunctuation) June 13, 2015
“They were interested in two photos, one from Copenhagen and another I had taken in Berlin,” he told a newspaper in 2015.
Mr Ó Sé took the top prize ahead of Yeow-Kwang Yeo of Singapore for ‘The Performer’ and Kuanglong Zhang of Shenzhen, China, for ‘The City Palace’. The overall grand prize winner was Sebastiano Tomada of the US for his entry, ‘Children of Qayyarah’.
Competition creator Kenan Aktulun said that the competition has gone from strength to strength in the last decade.
“We are amazed to see how Ippawards has grown from a small circle of people and friends of friends into a truly global audience with thousands of participants.
“In this time of political upheaval we feel very thankful to host such a truly diverse group of people and their view of the world,” he said.
This year’s winners were selected from thousands of entries submitted by iPhone photographers from more than 140 countries around the world.
