King's medic is student Urban Photographer of the Year
King’s medical student, Tom Pepper, has won the CBRE Student Urban Photographer of the Year competition with his striking photograph ‘Waiting for the train’ which depicts three passengers waiting for a New York subway train at 2am.
Now in its sixth year, the annual competition is the largest global photography competition of its kind and saw thousands of entries from across the continents. The theme was ‘Cities at Work’ and entrants were asked to submit an image portraying a specific time of day in any city across the world.
This year, for the first time, a student competition was run alongside the main competition which is sponsored by CBRE, the world’s largest commercial real estate services and investment firm. The winner of the main competition received a ‘photo safari’, while Tom won himself an iPad.
Tom’s winning image was captured during his medical elective from King’s as he travelled home from sightseeing in Times Square on the subway. It was far more than just a lucky snap, however, as he had earlier noticed the photogenic quality of the arrangements, actions and expressions of people trying to pass the time as he travelled across the city. Tom describes these three characters as a perfect example of how interesting the simplest of human actions can be. Tom said: ‘The photo was quite tricky to get because of the low light levels in the station. In the end I balanced my camera on my rucksack and took several shots in order to get this one. I’m really excited that my photo was chosen to win out of thousands of student entries from across the world!’
This is not the first time Tom’s photography has landed him success. Two of his images were selected for exhibition in the Best Shots Tour (2013) and he has been a finalist in both the Lonely Planet 100 Millionth Guidebooks mosaic photography competition (2010) and the Wildlife Photographer of the year competition (2013), as well as winning the Footprint Travel Photography Competition (2009).