Contributed By Theresa Tan
Tan with his eye-opening prize photo. PHOTO COURTESY OF TAN ZEXUN
Tan Zexun’s passion for photography landed him second place in the youth category at Montage 2011.
“I am always on the lookout for ways to improve my skills. Photo competitions such as Montage help me raise the bar as a photographer,” says Tan Zexun, 19, a second-year science student at Saint Andrew’s Junior College, also a photography ministry volunteer at City Harvest Church.
Montage, started in 1999 by the Photographic Society of NUS, is an annual event that encompasses seminars, workshops and a competition. This year’s theme was “What If?”
“This year, there were more than 2,000 entries, and I came in second in the youth category,” explains Tan, whose passion for photography was sparked when his father gave him a DSLR camera for his 16th birthday. “My photograph shows an extreme close-up of my mom’s eye. Using some unconventional methods, I managed to photograph an area of less than 2-by-1 cm without cropping. Because of that, I was able to clearly see all the nitty gritty details of the eye: the fibrous iris muscles and blood capillaries.” Tan’s intepretation of “What If?” was inspired by his fear of losing his eyesight. “What if people didn’t need their eyes in the future? What better way to say all that than with a magnified view of God’s natural creation: the eye?”
Tan won a Canon S95 advanced compact camera for his second placing. “My mom joked that she had a stake in my win because the photograph was of her eye. She promptly took ownership of the camera right after the prize presentation!”
