2006 Winners

There is a uniquely Australian sporting institution called Surf Lifesaving that embodies much of Australian culture. It friendly, laid-back, but at the same time, people took it seriously.  The younger members of Surf Clubs are called Nippers, and there are well over registered 100,000 members in Australia, and the national Surf Lifesaving competition is the largest youth sport competition in the Southern hemisphere. The competition photographed was an intra-club competition that helped young kids learn about the beach. With the vast majority of the Australian population living within an hour of the beach, learning beach safety is incredibly important. What was so much fun about the experience was seeing how the connections between people developed across a variety of groups. Unlike other sports, these bonds spilled far beyond the immediate participants to create a community that included parents, community members, the occasional swimmer who needed to be rescued, and even a curious American student. Anybody who wanted to could participate in some way in the event. The photo was taken with a 28 mm lens on a film camera- in order to take the photo with such a wide angle lens Nipper parents, who doubled as race officials, invited me up to the start line to let me photograph the race.