Ealing Wildlife Group

Ealing Wildlife Group

Celebrating and conserving Ealing’s wildlife and spaces for Nature

Celebrating and conserving Ealing’s wildlife and spaces for Nature

Category: Competitions

T-shirt Competition Winners!

Back in June we held a ‘design a t-shirt’ competition and asked you to send in your drawings based on iconic Ealing wildlife.  The competition was run by Neera, a friend of EWG and a local artist, who has done other fundraising activities for EWG in the past.

There were some great entries and, as it was too difficult to choose just one winner, Neera chose two!  The winners are:  Stag Beetle by Neven Makan, aged 9, and Hatchling by Poppy Powell, aged 12.  Congratulations to you both and thanks to everyone who entered.

The winning t-shirts are now READY TO BUY!  They come in child and adult sizes, you can  choose from two print colours, t-shirts are 100% organic cotton and GOTS accredited – perfect for gifts or just for yourself!  Best of all, £5 from the sale of every t-shirt goes directly to EWG to enable us to fund initiatives which help local wildlife.

EWG Chair, Sean McCormack, picked his t-shirt up from Neera last week and was proudly displaying it at Horsenden Apple Day last weekend.

Sean and Neera with one of the winning t-shirts

EWG volunteer Sandra Agar, also went along to see the t-shirts being printed:

A massive thank you to Neera for running the competition and to all of you for buying the t-shirts and continuing to support the work of EWG.

2021 5th Annual Photography Competition is now open!

Mission:

An exhibition of photography to highlight the wonderful nature and wild spaces on our doorstep, celebrating the important relationships between people and local wildlife in Ealing.

“Wake me up before you go go” by Steve Morey Overall 1st place winner 2020

Judging criteria:

We want to explore what nature and wildlife means to you. Everyone sees their surroundings through a different lens, so we want to celebrate diverse personal journeys and individual relationships with nature.

This is not purely a technical photography exhibition; equally if not more important is the portrayal of images that will engage the public with the natural world at a local level in Ealing.

We will judge each photograph impartially, without bias and keeping the mission of the exhibition in mind.

The judging panel consists of a panel of wildlife and/or photography enthusiasts, including members of Ealing Wildlife Group, Ealing Council Park Rangers as well as amateur and professional photographers.

Candy-Coloured fly by Sennen Powell 2020 2nd place Up Close and Personal

Categories:

  1. Community Conservation: Showcase people, projects or places coming together to care for, protect, enhance and conserve Ealing’s natural spaces. Or tell a story through an image that captures what community conservation means to you.  
  2. Abstract Nature: Capture the artistry and magic of nature, which could be the play of light and shadows creating fascinating patterns and shapes, or an abstract image exploring an object’s natural shape and form. This category is wide open so let your creativity go wild!
  3. Urban Nature: It’s incredible what creatures and life shows up in urban environment, so show us where the man-made environment meets the wild.
  4. Relationships with Nature: Capture the meaning of nature and wildlife to you and tell us why it makes your heart sing.
  5. Up Close and Personal: This can be taken literally if you’ve captured incredible detail, it can cover macro photography or you can interpret it as imaginatively as you wish.
  6. Young Wildlife Explorers: This is the under 16s category and seeks to celebrate our young wildlife enthusiasts and engage other young people with nature.
Mike Calden, 2017 1st Place Overall Winner

Submission guidelines:

  1. All submissions must be your own work and by entering you declare you have the legal rights to that image.
  2. Each entrant can submit up to three photographic images to be judged for competition
  3. Submission of entries does not guarantee inclusion in the exhibition.
  4. Entries will be eligible for a first, second and third award in 6 categories as well as placing in the overall winner category.
  5. You should specify which category you are entering; judges will appraise each entry using the categories as judging criteria but may award your photo in another category if deemed fit.
  6. High res original jpeg files to be submitted online at https://ealingwildlifegroup.com/2021-photo-competition/  by midnight on Wednesday 13th October 2021.  Maximum size of images is 15MB.
  7. Entries submitted after the deadline will not be eligible. Late entries cause extra admin and will NOT be accepted.
  8. Excessive manipulation of images is not allowed and will be grounds for disqualifying a photograph. 
    • Types of editing that are not allowed:
      • Excessive vignettes.
      • Artificial borders. 
      • Extreme changes to colour, saturation, light, or contrast.
      • Adding, moving or removing objects, animals or parts of animals, plants, people etc. 
      • The removal of dirt, highlights, backscatter, bubbles, debris and similar.
      • Composites.
      • Painting the foreground/painting out the background 
      • Anything that could be viewed as rendering the image a dishonest representation will be disqualified.  
    • Types of editing that are allowed:
      • Digital adjustments including tone and contrast, burning, dodging, cropping, sharpening, noise reduction, minor cleaning work (e.g. removal of sensor dust or scratches on transparencies/scans, removal of chromatic aberration),
      •  HDR, stitched panoramas, focus stacking are permitted providing that they do not deceive the viewer or misrepresent the reality of nature, or what was originally captured by the camera.
  9. No photos of staged wildlife shots, no captive animals, no dead creatures posed as if alive are allowed.
  10. Photographs must have been taken within the Borough of Ealing within the last 5 years; the exact location is to be included in the submission details.
  11. Please include your camera or phone details (e.g. ‘iPhone 10’ is fine, we have winners every year using phone cameras). List the settings if you wish so others who are interested in technical details can learn.
  12. Your description of the photo is just as important as the photo itself and is part of the judging criteria so please fill it in with more than just a name of species or subject and location. We want to hear the story of the photo and perhaps what it means to you. Failure to provide a good description that will be displayed with your entry may lose you significant points in judging.
  13. By submitting your photo to the competition you agree for EWG to share the image in promotional materials in future, with credit to you, the photographer.
  14. Winners will be announced at the opening of the exhibition in Walpole Park this Autumn and a list of winners will be posted online afterwards on Facebook and our website. We cannot guarantee all winners will be informed individually afterwards, and certainly not before the opening of the exhibition. 
  15. Political agendas are not factored into any part of the judging criteria. Photos win on their own merits.

Good Luck everyone! 🍀😊

EWG’s 5th Annual Wildlife Photography Competition opening soon with brand new categories!

It’s that exciting time of year, for you to go back through your photo archives or get out hurriedly snapping more. Because our photo competition is about to open for entries very soon indeed, for the 5th year running!

And this year we are changing it up a little with some new categories alongside some old favourites. Here they are, so get thinking about what photos you enter. As usual 3 photos per person, they must be from within the Borough of Ealing and taken in the last 5 years. All levels and ages welcome, under 16s have their own category. And many previous winners have been taken on phones so you don’t need expensive gear to take part.

  1. Urban Nature
  2. Relationships with Nature
  3. Up Close and Personal
  4. Young Wildlife Explorers (Under 16’s)

And brand new this year…

5. Abstract Nature

6. Community Conservation

More info to come soon! Watch this space.

Design EWG’s official T-shirt competition!

Exciting times ahead. Are you or your kids talented illustrators or artists? Well we would love you to draw an iconic species of wildlife (animal or plant) found in Ealing and send it in to be featured on our new EWG T-shirt design.

Just draw your design and email it to Neerja100@hotmail.com from Inkineeri.co.uk following the guidelines above and below. Best of luck!

Design a t-shirt competition

Friend of EWG, Neera Sehgal, is running a ‘design a t-shirt’ competition to raise money for EWG. The winning entry will be printed onto a t-shirt and sold – with a percentage of the profits being donated to EWG.

Neera is the owner of Studio Inkineeri, a screen printing business based in Ealing. Neera has a little home setup print studio which she intends on using for more community based projects.

Neera has kindly raised funds for us in the past by making some wildlife screen prints and she’d love to help us again!

All the t-shirts she prints on are organic cotton GOTS accredited (fair trade) and she uses more environmentally friendly water-based inks. Neera will not make a profit from this competition, she’s simply doing it to give back to our community.

How to enter

Neera would love you to draw an image based on iconic Ealing wildlife – what species are you most excited by or proud of having in the borough?

Your submission should be simple, with clean lines and not too fussy (so it prints well).

Once you have completed your drawing, take a photo or scan your designs and send them to neerja100@hotmail.com

Please also send full name, age and contact details. If you are under 16, please provide your parent/guardian contact information.

Deadline for entry is 30th June so get cracking and you could see you artwork on an EWG t-shirt!

You can see Neera’s instagram here: neerscreenprints

Neera’s webpage and shop are here: https://inkineeri.co.uk/

Ealing Wildlife Group Photography Competition is open!

‘Incoming’ by Paul James

Mission:

An exhibition of photography to highlight the wonderful nature and wild spaces on our doorstep, celebrating the important relationships between people and local wildlife in Ealing.

‘A Perfect Camouflage’ by Malgorzata Sikora

Judging criteria:

We want to explore what nature and wildlife means to you. Everyone sees their surroundings through a different lens, so we want to celebrate diverse personal journeys and individual relationships with nature.

This is not purely a technical photography exhibition; equally if not more important is the portrayal of images that will engage the public with the natural world at a local level in Ealing.

We will judge each photograph impartially, without bias and keeping the mission of the exhibition in mind.

The judging panel consists of a panel of wildlife and/or photography enthusiasts, including members of Ealing Wildlife Group, Ealing Council Park Rangers as well as amateur and professional photographers.

‘Life is full of winners and losers’ by Nigel Bewley

Categories:

  1. Beautiful Ealing: celebrate the wonderful natural spaces and landscapes on our doorstep
  2. Fantastic Flora: showcase the beauty and importance of our plant life (fungi count here too!)
  3. Relationships with Nature: capture the meaning of nature and wildlife to you and tell us why it makes your heart sing
  4. Up Close and Personal: this can be taken literally if you’ve captured incredible detail, it can cover macro photography or you can interpret it as imaginatively as you wish
  5. Urban Wildlife: it’s incredible what creatures and life shows up in urban environment, so show us where the man made environment meets the wild
  6. Young Wildlife Explorers: this is the under 16s category and seeks to celebrate our young wildlife enthusiasts and engage other young people with nature. 
‘Onwards and upwards’ by Julian Oliver

Submission guidelines:

  1. All submissions must be your own work and by entering you declare you have the legal rights to that image.
  2.  Each entrant can submit up to three photographic images to be judged for competition
  3. Submission of entries does not guarantee inclusion in the exhibition.
  4. Entries will be eligible for a first, second and third award in 6 categories as well as placing in the overall winner category.
  5. You should specify which category you are entering; judges will appraise each entry using the categories as judging criteria, but may award your photo in another category if deemed fit.
  6. High res original jpeg files to be submitted online at https://ealingwildlifegroup.com/2020-photo-competition/  by 8pm on Wednesday 30th September 2020. 
  7. Entries submitted after the deadline will not be eligible. Late entries cause extra admin and will NOT be accepted.
  8.  Excessive manipulation of images is highly discouraged and will not be judged favourably. Moderate processing and cropping is allowed, but should not include removal or addition of objects. Excessive vignettes, artificial borders, extreme changes to colour, saturation, light, or contrast that could be viewed as rendering the image a dishonest representation will be marked down. 
  9. Photographs must have been taken within the Borough of Ealing within the last 5 years; exact location is to be included in the submission details.
  10. Please include your camera or phone details (e.g. ‘iPhone 10’ is fine, we have winners every year using phone cameras). List the settings if you wish so others who are interested in technical details can learn.
  11. No photos of staged wildlife shots, no captive animals, no dead creatures posed as if alive are allowed.
  12. Your description of the photo is just as important as the photo itself and is part of the judging criteria so please fill it in with more than just a name of species or subject and location. We want to hear the story of the photo and perhaps what it means to you. Failure to provide a good description which will be displayed with your entry may lose you significant points in judging.
  13. By submitting your photo to the competition you agree for EWG to share the image in promotional materials in future, with credit to you, the photographer.
  14. Winners will be announced at the opening of the exhibition in Walpole Park this Autumn and a list of winners will be posted online afterwards on Facebook and our website. We cannot guarantee all winners will be informed individually afterwards, and certainly not before the opening of the exhibition. 
  15. Political agendas are not factored into any part of the judging criteria. Photos win on their own merits. 
‘Being a bee’ by Daniel Hatch (age 10)

EWG Wildlife Photography Exhibition 2018 Winners List!

Our photography exhibition is now live and open to visitors in the wonderful Autumnal setting of Walpole Park in the centre of Ealing. If you haven’t yet visited, what are you waiting for?

Now all the winners have had the chance to check it out and see if their images have made it, we’d like to publish the full list of the photographers behind the winning images. To see the images themselves you’ll have to visit the park where they will be on outdoor display until the end of November.

Drumroll please…..

Overall Winner

1st Hunting Barn Owl; Nigel Bewley
2nd I’m Nutty For You; Hegarty McGinn
3rd A Frog’s Eye View; Sennen Powell
4th Unexpected Birth; Malgorzata Sikora
5th Ready for lunch; Nicola Butler
6th Triplets; Diana Russell

Beautiful Ealing

1st Early morning, Ealing Common;  Toby Cross
2nd It’s always worth taking the scenic route; Janet Cree 
3rd Autumn returns in Walpole;  Ben Harding-Anderson

Fantastic Flora

1st Close Up Inside an Oriental Poppy; Suzanne Tanswell
2nd Sky over Ealing; Jadwiga Kotlarz
3rd Pretty Spiky; Carole Bonifas

Relationships with Nature

1st The wonder of nature; Nicola Goddard 
2nd Making friends with a newt; Maria Lundy
3rd Little Red Robin; Lisa Williams

Up Close and Personal

1st Crow, Crow, tell all you know; Steve Morey 
2nd Butterfly Macro Photo; Ben Gale
3rd Toad; Nicola Goddard 

Urban Wildlife

1st Urban Barn Owl; Nigel Bewley
2nd Glimpse of a vixen; Jacqueline Lau
3rd Foxy Zizz; Jane Goddard

Young Wildlife Explorers

1st Sogweb; Victor Tripp 
2nd Basking Spiderlings; Francesca Cottrell-Kirby 
3rd Autumn bee; Marianne Bussey 

Highly Commended

Wood Ears; Debbie Nixon
Parrots at Dusk; Jacqueline Lau
Many colours, one Ealing; Camille Gajria
Fishing for Breakfast; Nabil Jacob 
Meadow Pipit; Rachael Webb
Beauty of a humble sparrow; Keith Marriage
When you love them wild; Silvana Hladik 
Bruce Foxington; Nabil Jacob

2018 Photography Competition

Hi there,

We’d like to let local businesses and organisations know about an exciting community event coming up which they may be interested in providing sponsorship for.

How successful was last year’s photo exhibition?

In September 2017 we launched our first ever photography exhibition, an outdoor display of all the winning entries from the photography competition we opened one month previously. The exhibition received an overwhelmingly positive response from the public and local press.

Originally planned to be on display for the month of October in Walpole Park, in fact it was extended by a month and ran until the end of November. A testament to the popularity of the exhibition as a celebration of the wonderful wildlife and open spaces for nature we are lucky to have in Ealing.

Who sponsored it last year?

Last year we were kindly sponsored by Ealing Council, who have agreed this year to contribute to the exhibition and to build our official website, currently under construction. Here we will display last year’s entries and promote our 2018 event.

Why do we need funding?

We need further funding to help us put on an even bigger, better event this year, so are asking local businesses and community organisations to consider sponsoring us. Costs we need to cover include:

  • Printing costs
  • Installation of exhibition boards in Walpole Park
  • An opening event
  • Promotional materials

In exchange for sponsorship, there would be visibility and acknowledgement for your brand or organisation both online and at the exhibition itself.

What to do if you’d like to sponsor us

If this is something of interest, please email us on ealingwildlifegroup@gmail.com so we can send you more detail on sponsorship options and a press pack.

For now, feast your eyes on the three overall winning photos from last year’s successful exhibition!

Waxwings on Rowan by Mike Caiden
1st: Waxwings on Rowan by Mike Caiden
Bruce Foxington by Nabil Jacob
2nd: Bruce Foxington by Nabil Jacob
Comma Butterfly by Sennen Powell (aged 13)
3rd: Comma Butterfly by Sennen Powell (aged 13)

Many thanks,

Sean McCormack (EWG Founder) & Jenny Gough (Admin & Event Organiser)

Links to some local press coverage

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