OREANDA-NEWS. April 29, 2016. Featuring winning and commended images from last year’s Landscape Photographer of the Year Award, the exhibition will be officially opened by the award’s founder and renowned photographer, Charlie Waite, at 10am before embarking on a nationwide tour of railway stations across Britain.

The exhibition marks the tenth Landscape Photographer of the Year competition and will showcase the best of Britain’s rural and urban scenery, while offering a top cash prize of 10,000.

Network Rail is supporting the competition, offering the ‘Lines in the Landscape’ award, celebrating images that really capture the spirit of today’s rail network and its surrounding landscapes. The 2016 winner will be given the opportunity to take pictures from normally restricted areas of one of the most iconic structures in Britain – the Forth Bridge in Scotland. Standing at 110 metres above water and spanning 2.5km in length, the winner will really be able to put their camera to work while taking advantage of the breathtaking views the bridge has to offer.

David Biggs, managing director of property at Network Rail, said: "An important part of our Railway Upgrade Plan is creating stations that are truly exceptional places for commuters, leisure travellers and for those wanting to visit stations in their own right. The Landscape Photography exhibition proved extremely popular while on display at London Waterloo station, and we are delighted to bring it to other parts of the country where it can be enjoyed by millions more people. I hope that the exhibition inspires budding photographers to go out and capture their favourite railway image and enter into the competition.”

Charlie Waite is keen to encourage more people to enter the railway award.

Commenting ahead of the 2016 competition, he said: “Britain’s railways have always been close to my heart and it seems fitting that we should be launching the Landscape Photographer of the Year competition in this fantastic station which has had a dramatic effect on this city’s landscape." 

The tour dates for the 2016 Landscape Photographer of the Year exhibition are:
- Birmingham New Street station 29 April – 7 May
- Liverpool Lime Street station 9 -18 May
- Leeds station 20 -29 May
- Edinburgh Waverley 31 May- 8 June
- Reading station 10 -20 June

More information on how to enter can be found at: www.take-a-view.co.uk 

Notes to editors:

For high resolution and additional images from the exhibition or requests to interview Awards founder Charlie Waite please contact: leanne.coombes@midaspr.co.uk; 020 7361 7860

The exhibition features 60 winning and commended images from the 2015 Landscape Photographer of the Year competition. Around 150 of the best photographs from the competition appear in the Awards book – Landscape Photographer of the Year: Collection 9 - by AA Publishing.

All entries to the 2016 competition must be uploaded via the competition website: www.take-a-view.co.uk by 10th July 2016. Entry fees apply. Full terms and conditions can be found on the site.

The Network Rail ‘Lines in the Landscape’ Special Award will be presented to the one photographer who best captures the spirit of today’s rail network as it relates to the landscape around it. Images may be submitted for this Award of the operational national rail network anywhere in Great Britain (excluding Northern Ireland). Please note that images of any underground railway systems, light rail systems, heritage railways, disused infrastructure, pier railways or model railways are not eligible for this award. Images may be entered into any category of the main Award, but entrants must select from the appropriate dropdown on the entry form that it is also eligible for the Network Rail Award.

About Network Rail

Network Rail owns, manages and develops Britain's railway - the 20,000 miles of track, 40,000 bridges and viaducts, and the thousands of signals, level crossings and stations (the largest of which we also run). In partnership with train operators we help people take more than 1.6bn journeys by rail every year - double the number of 1996 - and move hundreds of millions of tonnes of freight, saving almost 8m lorry journeys. We're investing ?40bn in the railway by 2019 through our Railway Upgrade Plan to deliver more frequent, more reliable, safer services and brighter and better stations.