APOY
The winner of APOY 2023 was Daniel Sands. Here, he shares his thoughts about his success, and adds some advice for this year’s entrants
When did you start taking pictures?
I’ve been interested in photography since I was very young. I studied photography at A level years ago, but didn’t own a camera until 2008 when I started my current job as a programmer. The camera spent most of its life in a bag not being used, until I started taking photography a little more seriously in 2016 and bought a Canon EOS 5D Mark III.
What are your preferred subjects to photograph?
I’ve flirted with most genres of photography, especially during lockdown when I tried out macro, toys, creative portraits, etc but I think I’ve settled recently on landscape and low light.
You have a quite distinctive style – how did it develop? My introduction to ‘more serious’ photography was social media – I set up a page on Facebook and quite quickly became hooked on capturing mass-appeal type images. I craved likes and followers, and attributed higher follower counts to being more successful. More likes made my images better. This was completely unsustainable of course, so in 2018 I made the decision to shoot for myself regardless of reception. This freeing of the shackles (as it were) led to me exploring many different techniques in my work – from Intentional Camera Movement (ICM) to blending Multiple Exposures (ME) both in-camera and in post. Ultimately, as I was shooting for myself I was producing work that I liked, so I guess my style has developed based on my own tastes more than anything.
What were you hoping for when you entered APOY? The hope was to get a top ten place in one of the categories, to see my image printed in Amateur Photographer. I never really dreamt of winning a category, never mind finishing top overall! Having been a subscriber to AP for some time, I thought I might as well use the entry code from the magazine – nothing to lose, as it were.
What was your plan? As I knew I’d get a free entry to each category, I looked at each of the months and picked an image from my collection that I thought might suit. None of the entries changed except for the low light one, ironically, which I had a last-minute change of mind about! [Daniel won the Low Light category.]
Which categories did you feel were best suite
