Online photography club starts monthly contest

GANGTOK, 30 June: The Photography Club of Sikkim, an online club created by a group of photographers of the state, has been working towards promoting photography and encourage young photographers. Just a year-old, the club’s Facebook page now has more than 2,000 members from Sikkim and the neighbouring hills.

To encourage member photographers, the club started a monthly theme based photography competition around three months ago. This time Praveen Chettri has been adjudged as the winner of the 3^rd theme competition on 'landscapes', who was awarded with a cash prize sponsored by Karma Tenzing and Dr Karma Loday.

Addressing a press conference today, founding member of the club, Karma Tempo shared that the club was started 10 months back when some likeminded photographers discussed and floated an idea to create a page on Facebook. He informs that initially the page had only 10 members but in a short span of time the numbers grew to 2066 which includes around 300 from the neighbouring hills.

“Our main idea is to promote photography in Sikkim and to give a platform to young budding photographers to showcase their talent,” Mr Tempo shared. He further added that the club has also been trying to promote Sikkim tourism through photography. The club also plans to conduct workshops and exhibitions in photography in the near future, he stated.

Another founding member, Pempa Tshering Bhutia informs that in this competition the members upload photos based on a given theme. He further informed that earlier the club used to just congratulate the winner on the Facebook page but from this time two persons have come forward to sponsor the prize for the winner. On the same, he urged corporate houses to come forward to sponsor prizes to encourage photographers.

It is informed that the winner of the competition has also decided the theme for next month. Mr Chettri has announced the theme ‘Decisive Moment’ for next month's competition.

A member of the club, Tshultrim Norbu Wangdi expressed that photography is a creative field that provides a constructive way to spend time for the youth.