Arden crocus photo contest winners

Your Reading List

Ten Manitoba photographers have taken home about $600 in prize money from the 2016 Wild Prairie Crocus photography contest.

The contest is in conjunction with the annual Arden Crocus Festival, hosted every spring by the small village of 150, approximately 160 km northwest of Winnipeg. Arden has held the photo contest for eight years, encouraging entries from youth and adults anywhere in Manitoba (see the list of winners further down the page).

To be eligible, the photos can only be taken during about two weeks in April. The crocus normally emerges around April 1 and blooms at mid-April. It is the first Prairie wildflower to bloom each spring.

This year the youth winners include students in Grades 5, 6 and 8 in Arden, Minnedosa, Carberry and Austin. In the general competition it includes amateur photographers in Winnipeg, Portage la Prairie, Hamiota, Minnedosa and Stony Mountain.

The main contest is juried by a panel of judges, but an open ballot allows attendees to vote for a People’s Choice category for both children and adults, sponsored by the Manitoba Co-operator.

This year’s People’s Choice winners were Dr. Andrew West, assistant professor of respiratory therapy at the University of Manitoba and a Grade 5 student, Lyndsey Hofer of Riverbend Hutterite Colony, Carberry.

Lyndsey Hofer, a fifth grade student at Riverbend Colony near Carberry, returned to the contest again this year, capturing the youth participants People’s Choice award for her shot of a gnarled old tree and a fresh crocus bloom. photo: Lyndsey Hofer

Prizes also are awarded in four classes for youth and adults through community donations to the sponsoring organization, Lansdowne Heritage Resources & Tourism Committee, Arden.

All winning photos will be posted for a year on the Arden municipal website.

All of the photo entries are printed and posted for public viewing and voting one day only, at Arden’s annual crocus festival, on the first Saturday in May.