Photo contest winner

By NATHAN LAMB | Milton Independent Staff Writer
mireporter@mac.com

Summer may be months away, but Middle Road resident Harjit Dhaliwal can visualize page one of The Milton Independent , come the first week in July.

The picture (photo, right) is of a young girl, who is gazing across a grassy field at a colorful hot air balloon.

Dhaliwal knows that it will be featured in the newspaper, not because he's prescient, but because he beat out 12 other shutterbugs in a contest to have his work featured on The Milton Independent's annual Meet the Merchant issue.

“I think it's awesome,” he said, when asked about the news. “I think it's really exciting to win.”

Dhaliwal's photo was a clear favorite among Independent readers, and garnered 54 percent of votes cast for the eight finalists.

A systems administrator at UVM by trade, Dhaliwal is primarily a self-taught photographer who considers it an avid hobby. He approached the contest looking for something that would really represent Milton—and it turns out he found the winning photo right in his own back yard last summer.

It all started when Dhaliwal and his daughters were hanging out at home and heard the distinctive noises of a hot air balloon nearby. The family lives near a field where balloons come and go frequently, but Dhaliwal said this one sounded uncommonly loud and close, so they mobilized to get a better look.

Soon enough, they spotted the balloon taking off, and Dhaliwal snapped a couple of shots of his 7-year-old daughter Hannah watching it.

However, winning the contest wasn't quite that easy: batteries in Dhaliwal's camera failed shortly into the “shoot” and he quickly sent his other daughter home to grab some more. It was in that second set of photos the eventual prize-winner was taken, he said.

Persistence is important, acknowledged Dhaliwal: he submitted several photos for the contest last year, but was disappointed that none of his work was among the finalists. This time out, he decided to submit something with children, saying that's always popular. At this point, he's not complaining about the result.

Overall, Dhaliwal said he's gotten increasingly serious about his camera work in recent years. He already has several galleries of his work online and is hoping the award could give him a boost on future endeavors in the field.

“This will probably help me with my photography stuff,” he said.