Meet our photo competition winner

[Peter_S.]

Last month we asked you for your best shots for our photography competition, on the theme “In the garden”. From all the fantastic entries, we choose Andraz Antonic as our overall winner. A very successful entrant with six top-three results to his name, we asked him what inspires him, what kit he uses and how he created his winning photo…

Firstly, can you tell us where you’re based and what you do?

I’m located in the beautiful city of Ljubljana, the capital of a small country called Slovenia. By trade I am a financial advisor working in the largest privately owned brokerage house in Slovenia, but I’ve been doing photography on the side for some time now, primarily print sales.

When did you first get into photography and what was your first camera?

I got into photography at an early age as my father also owned cameras since I can remember. I got my very first camera some time in early high school. I can remember as it was one of the very first digital compact cameras on the market that I could buy with my small budget - 2mpix or something like that. I was not an easy child and always wanted to do things on my own - buying my first camera without consulting my father being one of them. And so the little point-and-shoot went everywhere with me, little 16MB memory stick filling up all too fast.
This was of course just point-and-shoot photography. As time progressed I got better and better cameras, but serious photography came much later. I guess it just takes time, plus one must grow up and put some years into one's life to have something to say (through photography or some other medium).

How did you feel when you received the email to say that you’d won our photo competition again?

I have been submitting images to Sony EU monthly competitions for a good year now and I shall admit upfront that I have been… let’s say lucky! Out of 7 times that I submitted images, I managed to place in one of the top 3 places 6 times. This time the theme was relatively broad and there were at least 10 to 15 really top-notch images that could easily have won the competition so I can’t say I was at all sure of the result, so the email made me grin from ear to ear.

Can you tell us the story behind your photo? Where did the idea came from for this picture?

The (general) idea for the VR goggles came some time ago when I saw a photograph online. It showed Mark Zuckerberg walking past a series of seated guests in a Facebook event and all of the guests had VR sets on their heads. I will never forget the eerie feeling the photograph gave me. A digital future making mindless drones out of all of us. Don’t get me wrong, I am a bit of a tech nerd, so I love everything that is new technology, but still, it is starting to be apparent how new technology might seem to connect us on some (global) level, but at an expense of deleting the “human closeness” level. I am currently working on a larger project of a series of similar images with a similar message as the winning image - the future is virtual and we are all connected. But are we present?

Can you run us through the equipment that you used to get the shot?

My father was always a Nikon shooter and guess what - so am I. Full disclosure - he did switch to Sony in the past year - owning a Sony RX100 mk2 and an a6000 with a couple of Sony glass lenses. For this photo I used my trusted Nikon D800 and a nifty fifty Nikkor 50mm 1.4G lens. The shot was handheld, using an off-camera flashgun SB-900 in a softbox on a stand that was positioned just outside of the shot to the left to bring more “contrast focus separation” to the subject, making her stand out more. As D800 only has flash sync-speed of 1/250sec and I wanted to shoot wide open at f/1.4 I also used a variable ND filter to darken down the exposure of the whole scene to about -1EV at the max sync speed of 1/250sec, darkening the background but still lighting up the subject with the flashgun. For this kind of set-up I always use flash in manual mode with a pair of radio triggers.

 

Finally, what would you advise to other photographers to get a winning picture?

Go out and shoot. Then come back home, look at the images and submit them to online forums to get feedback (asking your mom does not count). Then go out again, but this time with a plan. Sit down for 10 minutes and write down what kind of image (yes, one image) you would like to capture. Is it street photography, is it landscape? What kind of light do you need, what time of the day will be the best, what do you need to bring with you, will you need an assistant, can that assistant be your best friend? How will you get to the location, will there be a walk, are there already a lot of images similar to what you trying to capture? How will I leave my mark, what do I want to say with this photograph, am I simply recording reality (window photography) or am I trying to show how I feel inside (mirror photography)...etc. Getting winning images means having at least some answers to the questions above. Oh, and have your camera with you all the time the best camera in the world will not do you any good if it stays at home.