At last month’s opening of the Giving Voice art exhibition in Morristown, we spotlighted photographer Danielle Austen and invited you to vote for her entry in Ron Howard’s Canon Project Imaginat10n contest.
Lo and behold, her photo Dry Dock is a winner, and may be chosen by five celebrity directors to inspire short films that will premiere next summer.
“I’m really excited,” said Danielle, a former Daily Record photographer who shot the winning picture on a rainy day last May in Seward, Alaska, during a working vacation with another former DR photographer, Dawn Benko.
The image depicts a badly weathered boat, out of the water, against a mountain backdrop. The vessel looks lonesome and wistful.
“When I saw it, I knew I wanted to photograph it,” Danielle said. “I’m very attracted to things that are almost abandoned and neglected. It makes you wonder why it was left this way? It has a story. Why was it neglected?”
The Hillsborough resident has a degree in fine arts from Cornell University and studied photojournalism at the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. She worked at the Daily Record from 2003 to 2006 and now freelances as a portrait- and fine arts photographer.
A photo she shot in the Everglades during a National Park Service residency is on display through March at the Arts Council of the Morris Area’s Gallery at 14 Maple in Morristown.
Now in its second year, the Canon Project Imaginat10n contest has 10 image categories, or themes. Danielle’s theme is “Backstory.”
Celebrity directors Eva Longoria, Jamie Foxx, Georgina Chapman (designer and co-founder of Marchesa), James Murphy (founder of LCD Soundsystem) and Biz Stone (co-founder of Twitter) can choose among the winning images and use them any way they like in their films.
Danielle said she hopes to learn early next month if her photo has been selected by any of the directors. In all, she said, 91 winners were chosen by popular vote and by Ron Howard and Canon.
The contest was open to anyone using Canon cameras. Danielle said the winners receive $500 gift certificates from the company and two tickets to next year’s premieres.
A photograph from the first contest inspired When You Find Me, a movie produced by Ron Howard, of Happy Days and Apollo 13 fame, and directed by his daughter, actress Bryce Dallas Howard, who starred in Spider-Man 3 and The Help.
