The French Institute of Pondicherry (IFP) has announced the winners in four categories of its Wetland Photo Contest 2023 which was organised on the theme, ‘Revive and restore degraded wetlands’.
The grand prize for the 5th edition of the contest was won by Prasad P.K., from Chennai, for a photograph depicting the dire levels of pollution in a marshland outlying Chennai.
The respective first and second prizes in the various categories for the best portrayal of wetlands in the Tamil Nadu-Puducherry bio-regions are as follows:
Natural wetlands — Lokanath M (Mysuru) and Balaji Ramatchandrinn (Puducherry); Fauna/Flora — Chandrasekaran Arumugam (Chennai) and Nishad Plakkal (Puducherry); Humans and wetlands — Sivashankar Saravanan (Chennai) and V. Bose Pushparaj (Puducherry); Polluted wetlands — Lokanath M (Mysuru) and Saravanavel (Puducherry).
According to the IFP, an eight-member jury picked the winners from about 200 photographs submitted by over 100 participants. The winning entries for the contest, which had a total prize money of ₹25,000, were adjudged on parameters of aesthetic and technical quality, artistic value, naturalistic interest, ethics and valuation of environments and species and geographical area concerned.
The locales of the photographs ranged across Ramsar site bird sanctuaries, encroached marshes, farmlands, and polluted backwaters, beach-fronts and lakes.
The awards were announced during the inaugural of the third ‘WaterFest ‘23-Stewardship for Water and Biodiversity’, a seven-week festival that began on World Wetlands Day on Thursday, and will conclude on World Water Day (March 22). The prizes will be presented on February 11 and the photographs will be displayed at a month-long exhibition.
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