An eerie but beautiful image of High Spen in the snow has been selected as part of a prestigious collection of landscape photography.
Mark Bradshaw, from Rowlands Gill, will see his picture inside the Landscape Photographer of the Year book, for the eighth time in 12 years.
The image, as shown above, is of a row of terraced houses in High Spen, Gateshead, on a snowy morning taken from the golf course opposite. "With this particular photograph, it would have only worked on that morning as the blank sky perfectly mirrored the white snow on the ground," Mark said when asked about the award winning shot.
When he was younger, Mark always had a camera. "My first was a Zenit, a Russian brand." It wasn't until his mid 30s however, that he took up photography as a hobby and real passion. "I got a digital camera and I never looked back really," he said, adding that: "Phones are all well and good but in some situations you just need a camera to get the shot."
Read more: 55 years of the Tyne Tunnel - 10 photographs recall its early days in the 1960s
It was Mark's late Uncle Frank that prompted him to submit his work into the competition after seeing the images from its first iteration in a newspaper. Since then, Mark has been virtually ever present at the award ceremony, which took place in London last Tuesday. Despite the number of times Mark has been commended at the awards, the pride he feels never wanes. "It is nice to get more eyes on my work, and I get a real buzz from the competition every year."
In his craft, Mark likes to primarily focus on pictures taken in the North East, but not the types of buildings and landmarks you would expect. "The typical photos are of the Angel of the North or the Tyne Bridge but I like to look at ordinary things that other people would maybe disregard and walk right past and find the picture in them." This could not be shown more clearly than in this year's image of a row of houses in High Spen.
The impact that photographs have on people is something that has struck Mark. "I got a message on social media from somebody telling me that they lived in the area in 1936, it's the pleasure of it and those kinds of interactions that I do it for, rather than the money."
READ NEXT:
-
Gateshead streets 'unfit for human habitation' and ready for demolition in the 1980s
-
Newcastle United away in Europe 45 years ago - 10 unseen photographs
-
The North East and its tales of ghosts, mysteries and curiosities
-
Gateshead town centre's two vanished railway stations - East and West
-
The North Tyneside village once known as Moor Town - in words and photographs
