The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 271 No 7280 p853
20/27 December 2003

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Photographic competition winners

The winner of the first Pharmaceutical Journal photographic competition is Sue Smith, a pharmacist from Syston, Leicestershire, who will receive a Christmas hamper for her image entitled “Ice on Watermead Country Park”. The photograph is reproduced on this page and also on our front cover, where it has been cropped to fit the space available. One reason why our judges liked this image is that it strongly conveys a wintry feeling without relying on snow or frost.

Two runners-up will receive prizes of photographic books. The first is Karen Buckberry, from Gravesend, Kent, for “Outside London School of Pharmacy, January 2003”. This image impressed the judges by the striking way in which the bright red telephone kiosk stands out from an otherwise monochrome scene.

The second runner-up is John Taylor, a pharmacist from Aberdour, Fife, for “Winter walk”. It has a well balanced composition enhanced by the warm light and long shadows of a sun low in the sky.

The winning images have all been selected from our “Wintry scene” category. The second category, “Pharmacy in the 21st century”, attracted surprisingly few entries, none of which was deemed good enough for an award.

Although we received well over 50 entries, we were disappointed by the general standard of the images submitted. What was particularly saddening was to see many images that might so easily have been much better.

Some could have been much improved by judicious cropping. Others might have had more impact if the photographer had chosen a slightly different position from which to take the photograph.

A number of images of snow scenes, had clearly fallen victim to the automatic exposure control mechanism in commercial printing machinery, which had compensated for the brightness and whiteness of the snow by printing the images too dark or with a colour cast.