“Colours of
Spring” is the name of the photography contest organized by Student Services as
part of this year’s Culture Week. There were over sixty photographs presented
by around thirty contestants, including students, professors and administrative
staff from the Barcelona and Sant Cugat campuses.

Josep Maria
Martínez, the co-ordinator of the UIC Photography Club, was in charge of
handing out this year’s awards. The winner of first prize was the Erasmus
student Aisha Calderón, for the photograph “Feria de Abril”. Georgina Pérez, a
member of the Economic Administration Services staff, was awarded second prize
for the photograph “Pavo Real”. Finally, third prize went to Rodrigo Daniel
Álvarez, a fifth-year architecture student, for the
photograph “Despertar Rosado”.

As in past
years, a photography expert was invited to share his experiences and techniques
and, ultimately, to show the audience how to enjoy photography.

Pere Soler is
a travel photographer who has been to places such as Istanbul, Norway, Kenya,
Madagascar and Iceland and always manages to capture the landscape in his work.
It was his second visit to the UIC, and in this talk he explained that a
photographer’s technique and camera are not as important as knowing what he or
she wants to shoot, visualizing it and then using the camera to capture it.
“The photo should be captured with the camera, not in post-processing”, he
said. “Patience is a fundamental virtue for getting the perfect shot: looking
for different angles, on different days, at different moments...”.

“The best
photographs aren’t taken in faraway places”, Soler said. “They’re taken at places
close to home, where you are familiar with every detail of the landscape, the
stones, the vegetation, the change in the light, the air... Just by knowing
your surroundings and how the light will affect them, you will be able to take
great photos”. But it is also important to remember that luck has something to
do with it. “In any case you have to insist and be persistent”, he said.

As well as having given classes at the UIC, Pere Soler has spoken at
congresses, has been published in top national photography and science
magazines, such as National Geographic, and has been a finalist in
several National Geographic photography contests. He was also the winner
of the 2010 Catalonia Blog Awards for his blog “El racó dels meus somnis” (The Corner of my Dreams),
where he tries to “transmit what is behind each photograph, not so much the
technical side, but the emotional one, the experiences and anecdotes that are
there but not seen”.