Evy Rodenburg attends the bilingual secondary school VWO RSG Slingerbos in Harderwijk. At just 13 years old, she was technically too young to participate. ‘The minimum age was 14’, she admits afterwards, away from the jury’s ears. But they won’t have sleepless nights over it. The jury was unanimous in choosing the winning photo. Even though the quality was very high along the entire line, says jury chair Guy Ackermans.
A total of 120 secondary school students from around the country had sent in pictures for the competition. From that group, a preselection of 25 photos was made. The children who had shot those were present in the Pavilion together with their parents to attend the award ceremony. Quite a programme had been set around that ceremony, with short lectures by jury member Melchert Meijer zu Schlochtern and ecologist Wieger Wamelink, and Executive Board member Rens Buchwaldt taking on the part of MC.
Sky of Mars
Photographer and filmmaker Meijer zu Schlochtern showed images of the new nature movie about the Wadden made by Ruben Smit to which he is contributing. The movie will premiere in October. Wamelink spoke of his experiments with agriculture on Martian soil. Wamelink’s choice of topic had everything to do with one of the five winning photos: ‘Sky of Mars’ by Tjeerd Prins. The photo shows an impression of what the sky on Mars could look like.
The task set out for the competition was to shoot a photograph that has common ground with Wageningen research. For the 25 selected photos, a researcher was subsequently selected for a story around the photo. This yielded 25 photos and stories across the entire spectrum of research in Wageningen. The photos can be seen in The Spot on Tuesday and Wednesday, and they will be exposed in Gaia on Thursday and Friday.
From the preselected photos, five winners were chosen who will have the opportunity to attend a workshop by Meijer zu Schlochtern. The winners besides Rodenburg and Prins were Mats Smets, Paula Rudolph and Chris Adrichem. But the first prize, a 360-degree Nikon camera, was undisputedly given to Rodenburg. She shot the winning photo on the Spanish coast near Valencia. ‘The photo was taken when we were visiting in February of this year. We got up early specially to see the sunrise.’
Tourism
‘I really like shooting photos’, she continues. ‘Two years ago, I received a camera, a Canon SLR 1200D. That was the camera used to take the photo.’ She didn’t really have an idea of what Wageningen research would fit it. The jury linked the shot to the work of René Henkens (Wageningen Environmental Research), who is carrying out research into tourism and the problems it creates for both man and nature. The photo suits that theme very well. The photo itself shows an idyllic beach. But the reality is different, as Evy’s father shows on a different photograph. The beach is surrounded by obtrusive holiday homes.