Prints that Win: City by the Sea

“Breathtaking” is a fitting description for the image “City by the Sea” by Kathryn Meek, a photographer and winner of the Sunset Print Award at the APPA competition in Arkansas.

After spending the day in Croatia, Meek set up a tripod and her Nikon D700 on the top of the cruise ship, and took a series of pictures of the coast of Dubrovnik, Croatia. It took her 10 to 15 minutes to shoot several different sequences of photographs of the coastline. After finding the series she liked best, Meek photo-merged them together using Photoshop, thus creating the winning image. (Click on the image above to see the full image.)

“I love photographing scenery, that’s my passion,” Meek says. She believes the vivid colors, the overall beauty of the scene, and the certain uniqueness of the image are what grabbed the judges’ attention.

This isn’t her first competition. Meek started out entering state level competitions, and worked her way to regional and national competitions. She competes in print competitions because she feels they push her to be a better photographer.

“Through learning what the judges like in an image, I’ve gained an understanding of how to be better,” she explains. “I had to grow in order to please the judges, and that has greatly influenced my everyday work.”

Meek and her husband, Gary, started photographing full-time in 1977 when they opened a studio. She explains that she got into photography “backwards” because she fell in love with it after she and Gary decided to photograph weddings. “He loved it. I didn’t as much,” she says with a laugh. At one point, she and her husband got “burned out.”

“It got to the point where we didn’t even take a camera with us on vacation,” Meek says. It wasn’t until she started photographing scenery that she got re-inspired and found her passion once again.

Today, Meek is active in state, regional, and national associations. She served as president of Arkansas Professional Photographers Association, and is currently serving as Arkansas’ executive secretary. She has received several print awards in Arkansas, and has been named Arkansas’ Photographer of the Year numerous times.