UCL Slade student's passion for photography catches eye of Google

Links:

google.com/landing/photographyprize/" target="_self">Google Photography Prize

UCL Slade School of Fine Art

A student from UCL Slade School of Fine Art reached the final stages of a global photography competition run by search giant Google.

Will Saunders, 22, received thousands of votes for his entry to the Google Photography Prize, which challenged students from around the world to create themes for iGoogle.

Will, whose twin passions are photography and film, reached the last 36 before narrowly missing out on a chance to have his work displayed at the Saatchi Gallery in London.

He said: "I found out about the competition through our Slade email newsletter, and just decided to enter it one day when I had an hour before dinner to spare! I just thought about what would make for an original theme, and I decided that to make the five images out of one initial image would be quite unusual, so I found a very simple portrait photo of my friend Alex Springer, also at the Slade, and cut it into five slim photos, the idea being that as your iGoogle theme changed over the course of the day, Alex would gradually be revealed, culminating in the shot of his face."

More than 1700 people are using Will's theme - and he is already planning for his next project: shooting a 16mm film in Indochina this summer.

You can download his Google Photography Prize entry and set it as your iGoogle homepage theme by following the link above.

Image: right, Will Saunders' scrambled picture of fellow Slade student Alex Springer.