Jirawat Saiwuttinon has a passion for photography. And eventually his enthusiasm is rewarding the teen.
The 17-year-old 12th grader from Matthayom Wat Nairong School won the top award at the recent Canon PhotoMarathon XV Singapore 2017 photo competition, where contestants made the most of their creativity and endurance to create photographs according to assigned themes while under time pressure.
Jirawat won the Best of Show award and a Best of Theme "Tilt" award in the open category. He was also the youngest contestant in this category.
His interest in photography began in kindergarten, starting with a compact camera and then a DSLR camera at the age of nine with tremendous support from his parents.
He began entering photograph competitions at 13, winning the first prize at his first experience of competition on "A World Where Every Pregnancy Is Wanted" held by the Royal Photographic Society of Thailand and Unesco in 2013.
Jirawat said he learned about the Canon PhotoMarathon XV Singapore 2017 from Facebook and Canon Asia's website. Having honed his photography skills in the Canon Professional Workshop in 2013, he decided to join this year's contest in Singapore.
"The assigned themes were very challenging and difficult because I had to translate the short theme words into pictures," he said.
"Taking the "Tilt" theme as an example, I went to Singapore for the first time for this competition and it was hard for me to find a right location or story for the theme. I chose to photograph tilting lines on a building with a man in a tilting position like he was falling. I had a great experience with the competition and I was lucky to have support and friendship from older Thai contestants. It was like a dream that my photographs won the hearts of the judges and I was overwhelmed by their compliments because I was one of the small number of Thai competitors and we won three awards."
The other winner from Thailand is Lersom Loungpon, a 33-year-old engineer who won Best of Theme "Mysterious" in the open category. He said it was a race against time as competitors had only three hours to create pictures that both completed the tasks and impressed the judges.
"I had very little time to prepare but eventually I could wow the judges and Singaporeans with my photograph. At that time I happened to have brought a figurine to the competition, so I put it in a bottomless water bottle and used my iPhone to light it. The picture came out incredible and different, and the judges and Singaporeans were amazed. That was the best experience."
Canon PhotoMarathon was launched in 2003 in Singapore and has been organised in other countries in Asia. Currently, it takes place in 12 countries which are Brunei, Cambodia, China and Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.
This year's competition in Singapore attracted more than 1,500 photography enthusiasts to compete in four categories: student, open, team and school challenge. The assigned themes were "Tilt", "Celebration" and "Mysterious".
All Best of Show winners not only received a wide range of photography equipment as prizes, they are also entitled to an all-expenses-paid trip to participate in the Canon PhotoMarathon Asia Championship next year in Japan.
