An endurance athlete who has won her share of triathlons has snapped up first place of a different kind.
Lucy Bowden’s patience in wildlife photography has paid off after winning the Gerard Mills Prize for Wildlife Photography.
She staved off 118 other entries to claim the coveted title, with her stunning photo of a black swan visiting the University of the Sunshine Coast’s Sippy Downs campus.
“I thought everyone would be getting photos of the kangaroos or the little birds around campus, so I was keeping an eye out for something different,” she said.
“I was looking around on my lunch break, and there he was. I went down into the bushes by the lake to frame it up a bit and it turned out pretty well I think.”
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“I was very surprised (to win),” she said.
“I wasn’t actually going to go to the presentation. But then my photography teacher Dr Tricia King said I definitely should go and, yeah, I couldn’t believe it. It was really nice.”
Second place went to Koshi Tachieda, who captured a tiny whistler nestled delicately among the twigs, while Luis Kahraman placed third with a spectacular action shot of a blue-faced honeyeater emerging from a dive.
You can view all 30 finalists at the UniSC Art Gallery until Saturday, November 12, or via University of the Sunshine Coast.
The annual prize was named in honour of the late Gerard Mills, an Honorary Senior Fellow who devoted much of his life to education, art and photography.
He spent almost four years taking more than 30,000 photos of wildlife at UniSC’s Sunshine Coast campus.