5. AOP STUDENT AWARDS 2024- DEADLINE 24.6.24
Entry information. Start date: 2 April 2024 Deadline: 24 May 2024 now 29th
The AOP Student Awards were established in the early 1980s, to recognise and highlight emerging photographic talent which existed in further education institutions across the UK. Many of the AOP Student Awards winners go on to become discovery winners as assisting photographers and then as professional photographers for our AOP Photography Awards, as we pride ourselves on nurturing talented photographers throughout their career.
Details and Terms
Entry to the AOP Student Awards 2024 is open to all students (including those from overseas) studying photography in the UK at FE level or higher.
Best in Show plus Gold and Silver winners, along with selected finalists, will have the chance to be showcased and appear in the official 39th AOP Photography Awards Book which is published in time for AOP Awards Showcase in late September 2024.
Entries are welcomed as: Stills, A single image, or series of up to 4 images can be entered, created by a person. Moving image
Entry Procedure, Technical Specification and Format – Stills
- Stills Images or Series submitted online should be:
- RGB and in JPEG format.
- 3500 pixels along the longest edge.
- With a resolution of 300 dpi.
- Your final file size must not exceed 10 megabytes.
Please make sure you read the Terms and Conditions in full to ensure your entry is within the competition guidelines and can be accepted. Finalists’ entries will be displayed indefinitely on the AOP Awards website. No copyright is transferred to the AOP in respect of any works entered or accepted.
This submission was the most time consuming that I had done.
There were specific parts of the Parts of T&Cs that I was alert to:
1.3 Any membership subscription fees (if payable, i.e., you are not on a free membership) must be fully up to date. If your membership is terminated or resigned prior to the presentation of the AOP Student Awards 2024 the Entrant will be disqualified and any successful entry/ies removed. I had to update my student membership which had lapsed and this gave me a discounted entry.
7.3 Entrants may caption or title images, however, please note that they will be re- named within the AOP entry system, for unique and anonymous identification purposes.
7.4 Filenames must only contain letters (upper or lower case, and/or numbers (0 to 9), and/or underscore character “_” plus the suffix “.jpg”. Any other characters including further dots, hyphens or spaces could result in your file being rejected during the upload process.
7.5 Images submitted online should be: • RGB and in JPEG format. • Optimised for sRGB colour space (see 7.6, below). • 3500 pixels along the longest edge. • Your final file size must not exceed 10 megabytes.
7.6 You are responsible for preparing your images for viewing on a monitor, so we suggest that images are targeted/optimized for, and tagged with, the sRGB or sRGB IEC61966-2.1 colour profile (and not Adobe RGB or any other working- or output-space profile).
7.7 All images must contain metadata embedded in the image, and include your name, caption and description of the image. Any image without metadata with be returned to you to complete in a timely manner. An image may be disqualified if metadata is not completed.
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MY SUBMISSION
I entered 4 images as places:
Project title: What Lies Beneath
Project description: 2000 words
My preparation: Keep it simple and factual. Clear and thoughtful. most essential information. The statement should support the image in the best way possible.
1. What is the work? ground the viewer in what those images are and their context.
2. How did I make it? who you are and what drew you to that project, what was the thing that first got you excited about that project, point of attraction, point of curiosity, point of excitement, subject matter, and that form of expression.
3. Why did I make it? Tell us a little bit about your process.
4.Why did you choose to represent these images as you did.
I researched the places judge and concluded that I should angle my statements towards diversity and inclusion – perfect for my work.
Judge for Places: Sachini Imbuldeniya, CEO House of Oddities. ‘difference makes a difference’, she has dedicated her career to making the creative industry a more equitable and inclusive space both in front of and behind the camera.
My AOP Student Awards Submission
What Lies Beneath – Image 1: community 2: Harmony 3: cooperation 4: reciprocity
About the work up to 2000 characters:
What Lies Beneath
The images are taken from my body of work ‘What Lies Beneath’, a series of images taken in an ancient woodland. Here I use the landscape as a medium to express my observations and reflections on community. The photography transforms abstract ideas in my head into something concrete, positioning the ancient woodland as a visual metaphor and model for community. It is work is a personal response to a dynamic landscape, both internally and externally.
My experience of my local community provokes the project’s concept, and though humans provoke the concept of the work, they are not evident in the images. The local neighbourhood, often disharmonious and driven by difference, is a stark contrast with the harmonious and accepting characteristics of the woodland society, which I hold up as a model for diversity and inclusion. As an ‘incomer’ living alongside and accepted by most for many years, I find in common with other incomers that we are never adopted as locals, no matter how long passes or our contribution to the community. This story is common to settings across the world.
Inherent qualities like cooperation, support, diversity, resilience, inclusion, networking, mutual exchange, and adaptation, could be beneficially adopted in many human communities, and in my body of work I include closer images of woodland components to represent and signpost these characteristics.
Combining the world in my head with the one in front of me, through an internal and external passage through the landscape, has helped to heal some of the wounds that inspired the story’s beginning.
What lies beneath the emerald wrapping, embracing their collective realm?
What lies elsewhere beneath man’s disguised demeanour, civil but deliberately divisive?
Niki South (279 words 1938 characters with spaces)
Images with Titles and up to 100 characters
1. Community. This is the second in a series of images for my body of Work ‘What Lies Beneath’. The series expresses my thoughts on community, using the landscape of an ancient woodland to create a visual model where things coexist, are inclusive and support each other. My experience of local community provokes the concept of the work, as its characteristics are in stark contrast to the woodland, often disharmonious, discriminating and driven by difference. This image is an entry portal to a diverse community.
What lies here beneath the willing emerald wrapping, accepting their collective realm?
What lies elsewhere beneath man’s disguised demeanour, civil but deliberately divisive?
2. Harmony. This is the first in a series of images for my body of Work ‘What Lies Beneath’. The series expresses my thoughts on community, using the landscape of an ancient woodland to create a visual model where things coexist, are inclusive and support each other. My experience of local community provokes the concept of the work, as its characteristics are in stark contrast to the woodland, often disharmonious, discriminating and driven by difference. This image initially appears chaotic, however on closer sight the community is harmonious and supportive.
What lies here beneath the luminescent selfless sheaths, accepting mutual benefit?
What lies elsewhere beneath community spirit, concealed but festering?
3. Cooperation. This is the fourth in a series of images for my body of Work ‘What Lies Beneath’. The series expresses my thoughts on community, using the landscape of an ancient woodland to create a visual model where things coexist, are inclusive and support each other. My experience of local community provokes the concept of the work, as its characteristics are in stark contrast to the woodland, often disharmonious, discriminating and driven by difference. This image showcases cooperation in a complex and diverse community.
What lies here beneath the verdant creeping coverlet, collectively enjoying comfort?
What lies elsewhere beneath deceitful welcomes, smiling but spreading spite?
4. Reciprocity. This is the last in a series of images for my body of Work ‘What Lies Beneath’. The series expresses my thoughts on community, using the landscape of an ancient woodland to create a visual model where things coexist, are inclusive and support each other. My experience of local community provokes the concept of the image, where its characteristics are in stark contrast to the woodland, often disharmonious, discriminating and driven by difference. This image demonstrates the inclusive reciprocity that is possible in a community.
What lies here beneath the abundant enveloping eiderdown, slumbering peacefully together?
What lies elsewhere beneath acceptable appearances, charming but prejudiced?
https://submissions.the-aop.org/entry/0377d36a9d4fcfb8c1caf18506665c45/
https://submissions.the-aop.org/entry/0377d36a9d4fcfb8c1caf18506665c45/ submitted 24.5.24 deadline 29.5.24
My learning:
The technical requirement led to some learning, particularly about metadata.
The submission requirements for the word elements were revealed only at each part of the online submission. For instance, having written my 2000 character statement I hadn’t known that I would then be required to give a 1000 character statement for each image – this entailed some redrafting of earlier statements.
It was interesting angling the submission towards the ‘places judge’ – a good test.
Though it was time consuming I enjoyed the challenge of this submission.
NIKI SOUTH 