Last weekend, the annual Asferico photofestival took place in Marano Lagunare in Italy. I decided to visit the festival to receive the award for my runner-up position, because it might well be the only (and thus last) international recognition I’ll ever get.
The Dutch really did well this year. We won 15 awards, Wendy Kreeftenbergs image featured on all festival documentation and Paul van Hoofs image features the book cover. Overall winner was an unbelievable underwater image of a Castor fiber (sounds better than “wet beavershot”, doesn’t it?) by a French photographer.
The festival itself was relatively small, but well worth the visit. Especially the presentation by Manuel Presti was amazingly inspirational and my head almost exploded from all the mental notes I made. It was even better to be able to have a chat with the master himself. Multiple award winning photographer Cristóbal Serrano showed a very professional presentation (almost a movie trailer), but unfortunately he failed to show enough of his amazing work in between all the ‘Richard Attenborough-like’ voice-overs and bombasticly narcistic movie clips of himself at work. A missed chance as far as I am concerned.
Very interesting too was the insight into the jury process, kindly provided by longtime jurymember Marco Ferrari. And of course, it is always very nice to talk to other photographers and share thoughts and ideas. Somehow, you meet the same fanatics over and over again, which makes it fun to visit festivals like these.
I would like to thank Wilco Dragt for his friendly company during the weekend. We had a great time, inspite of some navigational problems on the way back. Rare jongens, die Romeinen.
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Nogmaals Big Congrats, een prestatie van formaat! Hoop zelf ook ooit zo’n eer te krijgen.