#MarinePhotography - An Taisce president Prof John Sweeney was on hand to present prizes to the winners at Clean Coasts’ Love Your Coast Photography Awards, held on Friday 10 October at the Waterways Ireland Visitors Centre in Dublin's Docklands.
Celebrating five years of the Love Your Coast Photography Competition, the top images from past years were projected onto Boland Mills in a stunning photographic display that illustrated the wonder of our coast.
Ireland has some of the most spectacular and diverse coastline in the world, and Clean Coasts engages communities in protecting these beaches, seas and marine life now and for future generations.
Clean Coasts launched the Love Your Coast Photography Competition in May during Coca-Cola Clean Coasts Week, and with a prize fund of €4,000 it attracted huge interest from Ireland’s amateur photographers.
With thousands of entries, the panel of judges had a very difficult task indeed to choose the winners across the competition's four categories: Coastal Heritage (won by Des Daly for his shot of the Abandoned Coastguard Tower in Ardmore, Co Wicklow), Coastal Landscape (Vincent Coey, for White Horses Bearing Down White Rock in Killiney), People & The Coast (Ian Hennessy for Diver at Bullock Harbour) and Wildlife & The Coast (Brendan Cullen for Puffin in Flight, Saltee Islands, Co Wexford).
“The coast is a critically important environmental asset for Ireland," said Proif Sweeney at the awards evening. "It's dynamic nature and ability to respond to pressures both natural and human is excellently exhibited in these photographic entries.
"An Taisce congratulates those photographers who have captured the essence of the coast and elevated our appreciation of it to an art form.”
An electronic exhibition of Love Your Coast will be displayed at various locations nationally and internationally over the coming months. A gallery of the winning photographs can be found on www.cleancoasts.org or on Facebook.com/CleanCoasts.
Clean Coasts is operated by the Environmental Education Unit of An Taisce and is supported by the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government, Coca-Cola and Fáilte Ireland.
