Dongting – A Lake in Flux from Sean Gallagher on Vimeo.

I am really delighted to share the news here on my blog that my multimedia piece, ‘Dongting: A Lake In Flux” recently won 1st Prize in the prestigious British Press Photographer’s Year 2011. These awards highlight some of the best wotk from British photographers working around the world, so am honoured to be included in their list of awardees this year. I am also especially grateful to the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting who sponsored the production of this work last year, as part of my Threatened Waters Project.

An exhibition of all the awarded work is now on at the National Theatre in London and runs from the 18th July to the 4th September. If you’re passing by, drop in and see some of the incredible work on show.

Kent State Univeristy

First, I shall be heading the US on Saturday to speak at a number of events for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting who are bringing me to America to take part in a number of outreach programmes, aimed at highlighting their sponsored work and the issues they cover. As a result, I shall be heading to Kent State University in Ohio for two days on the 26th and 27th, speaking in a number of classes and presenting my work on desertification in China. There will be a public presentation I believe on the night of the 26th, from 6:30 – 8:00 p.m. in Room 340 in the First Energy Room at Franklin Hall, in the School of Journalism and Mass Communications. If you are in the Kent State University area, please come by and say hello!

After Kent State, I shall be heading to Washington DC where I am scheduled to be speaking at the American University and Climate Institute. More details on those to follow later. Needless to say, I shall be updated this blog whilst on my travels in the US, so please check back for up to date info.

Heat of the Moment

The next piece of news is that my work on desertification in China has been featured on the new Pulitzer Gateway “Heat of the Moment”, a portal of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting highlighting their work on various climate issues. The subjects are incredibly diverse and it is well worth exploring many of the different topics. The Pulitzer Gateway is another source of outreach, mainly targeting students who will begin to log-in to the site to learn about Global Climate issues. In the next week or two, video interviews will be uploaded to the site and dialogue will begin between the journalists and students. It should be very interesting, so please do check back again sometime to see how it all developing.

Finally and by no means least, exciting news came from the Lucie Awards this week. In an exciting turn, Burn Magazine was awarded a Lucie for the “Best Photography Magazine”. Not only was that good enough,

but it also became the first online magazine to receive the award. As readers here will know, I have a close connection to Burn as I was awarded David Alan Harvey’s first Emerging Photographer’s Fund back in January of 2008. At that time Burn was “Road Trips”, a blog run by DAH. If you haven’t visited it, please do. Even though the dialogue has stopped there, there is still lots of great advice and discussion to read in the archives. So congrats to DAH, Anton Kusters (Burn’s Creative Director) and all other Burnians who have been apart of the evolution of Burn. It’s been a great journey and I am proud to have been a part of it.

The International Photography Awards Logo

I’m very happy to announce that my work for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting on ‘China’s Growing Sands’ has been awarded 2nd place in the Editorial: Environmental Professional category at the International Photography Awards 2009. This is the first prize recognition I have had for this body of work and I am happy that it can serve as another avenue to promote the issue and the message of the crisis the north of China is currently facing.

I was pipped to 1st place by the excellent photographer Ed Kashi, who I have mentioned here on my blog before. Like me, he is a regular contributer over on the Resolve blog and has been extensively covering the issues surrounding oil in the Niger Delta. I very much admire Ed’s work and I encourage you to check out more of his work here.

1st, 2nd and 3rd places in the Editorial: Environmental Pro Category

In choosing my photos for entry, I had to narrow down my whole work to 5 key images. You can see the selection that I went with in the picture below. It was a very tough choice but I decided to go for the ones which were singularly the most striking and which worked best together as a set of five.

The 5 images entered as 'China's Growing Sands' entry.

You can see all the images that placed in the competition here. Happy browsing. There are some great images in there!