By Alice Barrett

PHOTOGRAPHER Gemma Dawks has snapped up three prestigious awards.

Minchinhampton mother-of-two Gemma has received three international awards from The Guild of Professional Photographers.

This is in addition to a further 35 awards she won throughout last year in the guild’s monthly competitions.

A still-life and fine art photographer, Gemma won two top 10 awards and also became a member of The Photographers Bar – a unique distinction awarded to very few photographers who have successfully had images assessed by the guild.

Photographers had to submit several images a month for assessment over the course of a year.

Gemma said: “I am absolutely thrilled to have received these awards.
“After a lifelong passion for photography I started my professional journey at the end of 2012 and despite all the hard work I never imagined that a year on I would be winning international awards.

“I consider my work to be as much art as photography and after I’ve taken the image the magic really starts to happen as I begin adding light and depth and bringing in texture and detail in processing.

“My mouse is my paintbrush and my monitor my canvas.”

It is no surprise that Gemma has found her way to still-life and fine art photography having grown up in Tetbury surrounded by fine art in her mother’s gallery.

She was also influenced by her grandfather, Ben Maile, an internationally renowned artist.

Gemma prints all her own work from her home in Minchinhampton, where she lives with her husband and two young children.

This year she hopes to gain qualification with the guild and extend her range of floral and still life fine art photography and even expand into fine art portraiture.

Her prints and canvases are available to buy at the monthly craft and gift market in Tetbury and on her website at gemmadawksphotography.com

The guild is a photographic body founded in 1988.