A STUNNING shot taken on Tramore Beach was the winner of this year’s ‘Love Your Coast’ photography competition.
Golden Evening Surfer, by Kevin Doyle (main pic), took home first place in the People and the Coast category and was chosen from among 1,300 entries.
Clean Coasts’ Love Your Coast Photography awards were held virtually for the second year in a row, where the winning photographers for the Love Your Coasts Photography competition were announced.
The competition had a prize fund of €5,000 for the amateur photographers competing in five categories: Coastal Heritage, Coastal Landscape, People & the Coast, Wildlife & the Coast and a new Love Your Coast Category for 2021, Creativity and the Coast.
2021 saw three Waterford photographers score the top three places, with Adrian Hendroff winning second place in the Coastal Landscape category for their image Night Under the Stars (above), taken on Ballydowane Beach, Copper Coast, Co Waterford.
And Fergus Cooper was placed third in the Coastal Heritage category for his image Walking towards the Watch Tower on a Summer’s Day (below), taken in Ardmore, Co Waterford).
Michael John O’Mahony, director of the Environmental Education Unit said: “This is the 12th year of the competition and it has been very successful and very well received and we have seen some of the most amazing photographs of our coast over the last number of years.
“This is more than just a photography competition: we are an island nation and our coast and marine environment are incredibly important to us. Clean Coasts has almost 2,000 volunteer groups who are doing amazing work when it comes to managing and protecting our marine environment, so these photographs are a way for everybody to appreciate and celebrate our coast and be inspired to get involved too.”
Clean Coasts is a charity programme, which is run through the Environmental Education Unit of An Taisce, which engages communities in the protection of Ireland’s beaches, seas and coastline. To find out more, go to: www.cleancoasts.org
