Photo contest winners announced

The winners of the 7th annual photo competition put on by Australia-headquartered mining consultancy Snowden have been announced.

The contest’s selection panel reviewed more than 1,000 entries from around the globe. Snowden plans to exhibit the winning images around the world to promote and celebrate the positive aspects of the global mining industry.

This year’s overall winner of the A$10,000 prize was Joe Brnobic, a Canadian sound technician, for his photo of the Urubamba salt mine in Peru. The Urubamba salt mine consists of thousands of pools filled with salt saturated water that filters through salt deposits above the mine.

Brnobic said he was inspired by the “hard work of the people that work at the mine and by the fact that they use the same methods that their Inca ancestors used hundreds of years ago.” The mine is also known as “Salinas de Maras” and has been in operation since pre-Columbian times.

“The judging of the Snowden photo competition gets more and more difficult each year, but it’s a challenge I really enjoy,” said Australian landscape photographer Richard Woldendorp, who led the selection panel. “It is not often that you get to see such a variety of cultures, subjects and locations in a single competition.”

There were winners in four other categories.

Buchachon Petthanya’s photo “Almost done” taken in Phuket, Thailand, won in the black and white category, with a A$3,000 prize.

In the landscape/general category, Mamun Sultan Nur took the A$2,000 prize for a photograph of miners collecting stones and boulders  in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

The winner for equipment/machinery photography was Brock Johnston who received A$2,000 for his shot of a welder working at a copper mine in Arizona.

For people and culture photography KM Asad took the A$2,000 prize for a photograph of a worker carrying stones at the Sylhet stone mine in Bangladesh.

To view more photos and vote for the people’s choice award, which comes with a A$1,000 prize, visit www.snowdengroup.com.