4 Filipinos top Southeast Asia photo competition

FOUR Filipinos won five of the top six prizes in the 13th Photo Contest of the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (Searca).

They were Mariano Sayno, first prize; Jose Ramos, third prize; Christopher Andres, People’s Choice Award; and Jaime Singlador, the Searca Director’s Choice and the Philippine Department of Education (DepEd) Secretary’s Choice, both new special prize categories.

Phan Thi Khanh of Vietnam won second prize.

Launched in September 2019, the photo contest focused on the theme “Cultivating Southeast Asia’s Youth Agripreneurs.” It received 762 entries from September to November 2019 from 235 professional and amateur photographers from 10 countries in Southeast Asia.

The Searca Photo Contest is annually held and is launched every September.

Although most of the entries were from the Philippines, Myanmar, Indonesia and Vietnam, entries from Thailand and Laos made it to the top 15.

Sayno’s photo shows a mother-and-son tandem in the town of Laguna, known for its duck raising cottage industry. The photo that bested 761 other entries depicts a young boy cheerfully holding a duck as he watches his mother place freshly laid eggs in a basket full of eggs, which frames the pair.

Khanh’s photo captured a grandmother-granddaughter team patching up a fishnet in the coastal city of Hue, Vietnam.

Ramos’ winning entry shows a bright-eyed young boy who appears to be listening to an adult man as they gather weeds in a rice field.

The People’s Choice Award winner by Andres, which garnered over 1,400 likes on Facebook, shows two young men with the older one teaching the other how to plant seedlings.

The photo that bagged the Searca Director’s Choice, Glenn Gregorio chose the refreshing image of two young girls and their grandmother in a cutflower farming scene.

For the DepEd Secretary’s Choice, Leonor Briones selected a photo of children studying outdoors in a rural farming community.

With the contest, Searca hopes that more young people would be inspired to involve themselves in agricultural pursuits.

“Searca wants young Southeast Asians to see the agriculture sector as an attractive business proposition that will earn for them a decent living, allow them to stay with their families, and one that will create a vibrant rural economies in their communities,” Gregorio, the Searca director, said.

The top three winners received cash prizes of $1,000, $800 and $500, respectively, while the winners of the Searca Director’s Choice and DepEd Secretary’s Choice received $500 and the People’s Choice Award, $200.

The winning photos and the rest of the finalists may be viewed at https://photocontest.searca.org/.