Dunedin photographer Simone Jackson and fellow Otago photographers Janyne Fletcher and Jackie Ranken have won national professional photography awards.
Ms Jackson was ''really happy'' to win the nature photographer of the year award - the biggest award she had won in 15 years as a professional photographer.
She had always been ''a bit of a nature buff'', and had recently photographed albatrosses near the Royal Albatross Centre at Taiaroa Head as part of a two-year project on the life-cycle of the birds.
Jackie Ranken, of Queenstown, won the creative photographer of the year award, and said it was great that three Otago photographers had won awards in the same year.
This was helping to put the region on the map in terms of national acknowledgement of its photographers, she said.
Ms Ranken has won many national photography awards during a long professional career in both Australia and New Zealand.
''I always try to push my creative boundaries in some way.''
She noted that this was also the first year that Otago photographers had won the Curtis Poole award for the highest-scoring region at the awards.
