Keen photographers from across the city were presented with digital cameras for winning a competition celebrating photos of life in their local area.
The Birmingham Snaps competition was organised as part of the Get into Digital month organised by Digital Birmingham, a Birmingham City Council initiative to ensure the benefits of digital technologies are available to the city.
Entrants from all parts of Birmingham were invited to take digital photographs of life in their local area and upload them to “The Big Picture” website, run by Arts Council West Midlands and supported by the BBC.
The website collected photos from all over the West Midlands with the aim of creating the world’s biggest photo mosaic.
The winners from each constituency were presented with their prize of a Sony CyberShot DSC W130 camera, donated by Computerland UK, at Birmingham’s council house. Birmingham City Council deputy leader Paul Tilsley, who heads the Digital Birmingham partnership, made the presentation.
“Birmingham is an exciting, diverse city and the Birmingham Snaps competition was designed to give citizens the opportunity to demonstrate that online,” he said.
“Harnessing the creative power of Birmingham people whilst demonstrating the benefits of digital technologies is what projects like this are all about.”
The Birmingham Snaps competition was the brainchild of Jagwant Johal, Birmingham Council’s constituency director for Edgbaston, who was keen to ensure as many images as possible of Birmingham were available online.
“A key role for constituencies is ‘place-making’ – promoting the positives about all of Birmingham’s constituencies,” he said.
“Photos taken by local people of their favourite spots is a good way to get local people involved in the promotion of Birmingham’s many communities.
“We’d like to build on this great competition and encourage residents to create a photo library of images for each constituency that best portray their area and how they would like it promoted.”
