2010 Winners' Gallery

Biography

Larry Louie leads a dual career. In his optometry clinic, he is Dr. Larry Louie, working to enhance the vision of people from all walks of life in the urban core of a North American city. On his travels, he is a humanitarian documentary photographer, exploring the lives of remote indigenous people, and documenting social issues around the world. As an optometrist, Larry adjusts people's visual perception. As a photographer, he seeks to adjust people's view of the world. Either way, he is interested in things that exist outside the regular field of vision.

Over the last couple of years, he has used his photography as a platform to highlight the work of Seva Canada and its partners, along with other social issues and challenges people are encountering in a world facing rapid urbanization and globalization. He wants to engage people in inspiring stories of perseverance and strength, not only of those who have found themselves caught in such a plight, but also amazing individuals and organizations that are lending a helping hand. From Seva Canada's Vision 20/20 Goal the global initiative for the elimination of preventable and avoidable blindness in the world by year 2020, to the United Nations Development Program's Millennium Development Goals to End Poverty, he hopes his photographs will be able to tell the stories and make a difference, and to reveal light that is found in the darkest of places.

Biography

Kat Waters has been photographing the world since before she can remember. Her father, a professional studio photographer, got her her first camera at the age of 5, and she barely went anywhere without it.

In 2000, aged 7, she had her photographs exhibited in London for the first time, in the BBC London Photographic Awards. In 2004, she won the very same competition in the under-18s category, aged 10. Things got quieter when she went to secondary school; her school is very academic and her love of the arts got pushed aside somewhat in the pressure to achieve the best grades. This changed in 2007 when an earlier YTPOTY portfolio was awarded “commended finalist”, and after that she began to enter far more international competitions. The following year, she was a prize-winner in the International Garden Photographer of the Year awards, and the year after that, 2009, she won the Young Garden Photographer of the Year category.

In early 2010, Kat began to develop a love for using black and white film with her dad’s old camera and her mum’s old wide-angle lens; this passion grew into an obsession after she won the under-25s Black and White Photographer of the Year 2010. This year, Kat has been applying to study BA (Hons) Photography/Press and Editorial Photography at various prestigious art institutions. She doesn't know where the future will take her, but she knows she'll always be a photographer.