Honours galore at Howrah salon

Vladimir Proshin’s photograph ‘In the River’
Vladimir Proshin’s photograph ‘In the River’

Vladimir Proshin caught five country boats floating together on a river. Their masts high, the boats were setting sail at dawn, through thick fog that was beginning to clear as the sun came up. Vladimir named this picture, ‘In The River’, which won a gold medal from the Fèdèration Internationale de l’Art Photographique (FIAP) at the Society of Photographers’ (SOP) 47th Howrah Colour Salon 2015.

FIAP gold medal is considered to be the highest honour for photographers, who participate in competitions. At the 47th Howrah Colour Salon, 440 photographers from 41 countries sent in 3,120 entries. The panel of seven judges selected 761 photographs which were displayed through a slide show every evening from February 28 to March 1 at the Howrah Medical Club hall. There were three segments of the colour salon, open, creative and nature. This year’s colour salon was inaugurated by artist Nikhilesh Das. Also, a postal stamp with the SOP logo was launched on that day, marking the 50th year of the society.

Artist Nikhilesh Das launches a postal stamp with the SOP logo. Picture by Gopal Senapati
Artist Nikhilesh Das launches a postal stamp with the SOP logo. Picture by Gopal Senapati

FIAP contributed three gold medals at the Howrah Colour Salon and Vladimir Proshin received one. Marcel Gustave Beauraind from Belgium won the second and Prabir Kumar Das from India won the third. The Photographic Society of America (PSA) contributed three gold medals and one silver medal at the competition. Martina Wolf’s photograph of a woman draped in lace won a PSA gold medal. India’s S P Nagendra’s wildlife shot of a cheetah chasing a deer, in the nature segment won the second PSA gold medal while the third went to India’s Shantanu Saha. Ian Whiston of UK won the PSA silver for the photograph of a lion and lioness in a fight.

“The quality of photographs have improved over the years,” said Asim Bhattacharjee, the secretary of SOP. Since digital photography is the order of the day, there is also place for experimentation in this art form. “A lot of photographs in the creative and open section may look less like photographs and more like creation through software. It is up to the experienced eyes of the judges to decide how much of the image is a photograph and how much has been created,” said Bhattacharjee.

Apart from the foreign medals and honour mentions, SOP gives away 10 gold medals and also certificates of merit. Memorial awards in the name of veteran photographers, Benu Sen, KG Maheswari and T D Pal were given away. The Benu Sen Memorial Award went to John Harding from the UK. The KG Maheswari Memorial award has been introduced this year as a tribute to the photographer, who died in December last year. Danielle Rovangati from Argentina won this award. TD Pal Memorial award went to Daniel Lybaert from The Netherlands.

source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph, Calcutta / Front Page> Howrah> Story / by Dalia Mukherjee / Friday – March 13th, 2015

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *