Local photographer wins national award

By John Watson Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

A local photographer has been recognized with an award for a photograph submitted to a competition which attracted participants from around the country. 

Sean McCormick explained he was “nagged” into submitting a photo he captured of the irrigation canal in Strathmore to the Love Your Neighbourhood National Photography Competition from the website, Nextdoor.

His submission, titled “Fire in the Sky,” features the Tom Sadler bridge, across the canal, taken at sunset.

“I am feeling pretty good. I kind of got nagged into entering the contest because some of my contacts on Nextdoor wanted to see us in there,” said McCormick. “I feel good, but I also feel kind of guilty because I have some professional training and I stepped on some amateurs.”

The contest criteria were to submit a photo of one’s neighbourhood and describe what the entrant liked about their location. 

In addition to his professional background, McCormick also has experience in the competitive scene with his photography. 

“I’ve mostly competed in small agricultural fairs and such. It is just, after a while, I kept taking home all the first places and feeling bad. So, I basically stopped entering contests at that point,” he said.

As a hobbyist, McCormick explained he has been shooting since childhood after receiving a camera from his grandmother. 

Professionally, he added he primarily shot weddings and portraiture, as they are core areas of the industry where financial gain can be made. 

“I would have liked to do some commercial work, but it just never really seemed to happen, especially when I was mostly living in small towns,” he said. “Personally, I like shooting landscapes, nature, basically whatever is around me. I don’t really have any one particular thing. I like landscapes, but I don’t travel to Banff every weekend just to shoot.”

McCormick’s contest submission, “Fire in the Sky,” was taken using a drone flying low over the canal. His idea was to take several frames at different exposure values and stitch them together later to create an image with much higher dynamic range than would normally be possible with a single frame.

“When I’m shooting, I can see in my head ahead of time what I’m going to get because I know what my camera and my equipment can do and what I can do in software,” he explained. “I’ll see the shot in my head, I’ll take all the pieces of it with a camera, and then when I get back home, I’ll just put the thing together and it looks like what I thought I saw when I was there.”

McCormick said he is likely going to step back from competition again and focus more on his photography as a hobby for the foreseeable future.