HOT SHOT MARK CAPTURES TOP PHOTO AWARDNG
Castletownroche native, Mark Condren, has been named Photographer of the Year for 2009 in the prestigious AIB sponsored competition, writes Antonia Zane.
Mark, now based in Dublin and a photographer for the Sunday Tribune, was one of 130 photographers who participated in the competition, in which 2,000 photographs representing the wide spectrum and versatility of photography (News, Arts, Politics, Feature, Individual Study and Picturesque) were evaluated by a judging panel. He won the award for the Arts and the Individual Study sections.
“I wasn’t expecting it at all. Every year you want to see it happen and it doesn’t. It was a massive shock and surprise. It’s the biggest one you can get,” he told The Avondhu.
SELF TAUGHT
Mark started being interested in photography when he was 15 and he was mostly self-taught. Fast forward all these years later and he is at the top of his game. His photographs are soul searching and they manage to tell a profound story to the world about the world we live in. After his impressive achievement, Mark was invited by Ryan Tubridy to the Late Late Show.
Here is what he said about the experience of being on the biggest TV show in Ireland, “It was nerve racking. You count down the minutes to go in and then you have a wobbler and you want to run away. You get a natural high though, after.”
BACK FROM HAITI
Mark, who is a St Colman’s College past pupil in Fermoy, has travelled much of Africa on various assignments for the Sunday Tribune and he has just returned from an assignment in Haiti, where he was for a total of eight days.
“It took two days to get into the country. I had to fly to France and then to the Dominican Republic, from where I had to take a gold truck into Haiti. It was just devastating. The capital has been flattened out and although the bodies have been taken off the streets, the smell still lingers in the air,” said Mark.
He is the recipient of seven previous photographic awards, but the AIB Photographer of the Year award is the most prestigious a photographer can get in Ireland.
Published:
Thursday 11th February 5:40pm
