You may be wondering why there’s no photo of the winner of the Isle of Wight Photographer of the Year, at the event. Second and third placed Neil Hunt and Kelly Fraczynski were photographed there, but the winner, Tina Nicholls was not.
VentnorBlog has been contacted about it and have subsequently learnt that there’s a twist to the tale of Tina Nicholls winning the Isle of Wight Photographer of the Year 2008 award.
Apparently there was some controversy at the awards event at Quay Arts on Saturday night.
Those in the room were shocked to see that when Tina arrived with her friend and was refused entrance to the building by the IWDIG organisers, who asked him to leave.
We understand that it wasn’t because her friends behaviour was out of order, but that the IWDIG organisers had in the past objected to his critique of members work.
We hear that Tina felt that she couldn’t stay at the event because of the organisers attitude to her friend – pretty shocking given that she was one of the finalists.
Given no option, they had to leave the event, which she then went on to win. All rather confusing and embarrassing for the organisers.
Ho hum. With Tina hoping to finally collect her award and prize tonight at the Niton Camera Club meeting, let’s hope things are a little more cordial.
We’re contacting the IWDIG who are behind the event to find out their version of events. If we hear back, we’ll let you know.
UPDATE: IWDIG got back to us with the following, “unfortunately we are unable to comment at this present time but we will be issuing a statement in due course.”
(The cropped Web page grabs that originally sat in this article have been removed at the request of IWPOY)
Both graphics: grabs from IWDIG Website.
