Port of Tyne Reflects upon its river.

Presenting the awards, Port of Tyne CEO Andrew Moffat said, ‘At the time we launched Reflect last year, we asked entrants to capture the essence of the river Tyne. We were overwhelmed with the entries and this year’s Reflect has not disappointed us.’The Port of Tyne Reflect awards were launched in 2007 and designed to encourage people of the north east to enter their perspective of the river Tyne. This year, photographers were invited to submit images in four categories, all based in and around the river; Artistic Tyne, Historic Tyne, Maritime Tyne and Wildlife Tyne. Matt Forster of the Art Works Galleries, Simon Greener, picture editor of the Journal, Tim Richardson, chief photographer of the Shields Gazette and Captain Ian McNaught of Cunard made up the judging panel, which had the unenviable task of choosing one winner and three runners up from each category.

Steve Middleton, winner of the Maritime category said, ‘I have been interested in photography for many years and made the leap to digital a couple of years ago using the birth of my daughter as an excuse to upgrade my old film SLR, which has helped rekindled my interest in photography. I’ve even managed to sell some photos but Reflect is the first competition I’ve entered and winning is a great surprise! The prize money is obviously very welcome too. It will enable me to buy some more equipment to help expand my kit bag.’

Jennifer Dunn, the Port of Tyne’s marketing & communications manager concluded, ‘When we launched Reflect, our aim was not only to encourage creativity, but hopefully to open doors to enterprise. This has been brilliantly illustrated by one of last year’s winners, who told us the prize money helped him buy photographic equipment to begin work as a wedding photographer.’

The Port of Tyne plans to follow the success of this year’s competition by staging it again with Reflect 2009. For further information visit www.reflect-tyne.com