Amateur Tellico Village photographers gave their best shot in a community contest in which winners were announced Oct. 8 at the Yacht Club.
The contest, which spanned April 2 to Aug. 1, was sponsored by The Connection, the News-Herald, the Tellico Village HomeOwners Association, Tellico Village Broadcasting and Tellico Village Property Owners Association.
There were more than 175 entries from 66 photographers and 25 were picked by professional photographers Dennis Sabo and Lynn Carter to be on display last week at the Yacht Club. Nineteen of the 25 were Honorable Mentions, while one each in the categories of nature and lifestyle were picked in Blue Ribbon and Red Ribbon. One was runner-up for Best-in-Show, and one was Best-in-Show.
Submissions by Jim Miller and Jake Moore were selected for the cover of the winter 2019 and summer 2020 editions of the Tellico Village Directory.
Members of the Tellico Village Woodworkers Club constructed boards to display the 25 photos during the unveiling of winners.
The goal was to showcase lifestyle and nature within Tellico Village.
“It’s just another nice event for the residents of Tellico Village,” Bill Whitehouse, photo contest co-chairman and a member of TVB, said. “It’s a way for the amateur photographers in the Village to be able to show off their stuff.”
Contest winners were announced during the HOA social, which Annette Schmidt, photo contest co-chairwoman and HOA vice president of communications and marketing, said drew a record crowd.
“We probably will skip next year,” Schmidt said. “We’ll do it every other year. Unless we get a lot of — if we started getting a lot of feedback. This is a record crowd here tonight, and that’s because frankly we sent out multiple email blasts to tell all the people that entered. Nobody knew who won. I’m sure there are some disappointed people down there that didn’t win, but the good thing is that even though they didn’t get one of the 25 awards, the pictures were all shown.”
Norma Aiello got Best-in-Show for her shot of a juvenile eagle swooping around the lake.
“The lake, that was when the water was way up from the rain, and I have him pulling a fish apart down there, too, and he flew around looking for fish, very low, and I was in the lower part of my deck and I saw him and had my camera in my hand and got the shot,” she said. “He came right at me, I thought he was going to come up, I went up to the second level of the deck, I climbed up the steps, and he was coming right at me. I think he veered off. I thought, ‘My goodness, he’s coming at me.’ But I was surprised, I was pleased that I won. I was hoping that I would do something, but I didn’t know that I would get Best-in-Show. I think that’s pretty good for all the amateur photos that were out there.”
Aiello submitted four photos, all of birds, with hopes of placing them in the nature category.
“I mean there were a variety,” she said of the submissions. “Some people did flowers and butterflies and others liked the landscapes, and I’m thinking the next time maybe I’ll try for landscape. I think it’s hard to figure out a good landscape for here and get the right angle and everything. I figure, well, I’ll start working that out in my head and then I’ll try and get the photo.”
On a whim, Julie Langlas submitted a photo of a sunrise from her deck that led her to taking People’s Choice and Honorable Mention.
“I have a dock where the people who designed the house, I can see from the house the sunrise and the sunset,” Langlas said. “So when I first moved here last year every single morning or night — I’d wake up in the morning and I’d look out and I’m like, ‘Oh my gah,’ and I was out on that dock every morning because it was just so amazing and so different every day. I only submitted one photo but I have 20 because I have a whole wall — sometimes they’re pink, sometimes they’re yellow, sometimes they’re blue, sometimes they’re orange. It’s just crazy.”
The photo was taken with her cellphone, which she has with her most of the time.
“So many times what I’ve found is I always put the iPhone in my pocket and what I’ve found is so many times you can be down at the dock and you go, ‘Wow,’ and by the time you go run and get your camera and be back down it’s changed,” Langlas said. “Either the colors are gone or what you just saw is gone. So that’s part of why I think it always ends up on my iPhone, too, because the spur of the moment.”
Miller was surprised to have two photos recognized, including a Tellico Village Directory cover winner. One focused on a foggy morning with the sun rising behind trees, while the other showcased the backside of the Yacht Club with fog rising from the lake.
“Two of those actually I did not take specifically for the contest,” Miller said. “One I took back probably in 2016, something like that, that I go to that area — anytime there’s fog I go to that area for pictures. I’ve given it to friends in the past and people have liked it, and the one at the Yacht Club, that was just another foggy morning. Again, I was just over there, it had nothing to do with the contest, it was probably the year before, but when this contest came up I went through all my photos and right now I’ve got 53,000 photos on my iPad so it’s a big job to do that, to pick out photos that I thought you might like.”
Miller said “fog” photos are a theme for him.
“I think they’re very difficult to take, first of all, so it’s a real challenge,” he said. “When you see fog it looks like one big soft mass, but when you see all the little dots that’s the water pellets in there, so you got to find a way to make sure those are not interfering with your picture. People like color, they like things that jump out to you, and fog you don’t get that. You’ve got to take a very good photo for somebody to even like it because there’s no color. I think it’s the challenge of me probably than anything else and the mystery.”
