Lamon is a small village in the Dolomites where I live now during my volunteering service.
Every year the local tourism center Pro Loco Lamon organizes a photo contest to choose the best photos made by my locals and a few tourists to represent the natural environment and the beauty of life in the village.
Each year’s competition has a topic. In 2013 the contest named “Frazione e borgate”, which means “Small Villages”. Before, in 2012 and 2011 it was “Alla riscoperta dei sentieri” (“Rediscovering the Trails”) and “Cartoline dall’altipiano” (“Postcards from the Plateau”), respectively.
Outdoor writer from the Dolomites, Italy, and Karelia, Finland
— Two months ago I chose two photos for the contest, sincerely believing that I would win 120, 80 or at least 50 euros for the last third-place — a nice addition to my volunteer “salary” of 115 euros a month, which I live on for the last six months in Italy. In addition, they promised to make postcards from the photos of the winners and runners-up. So I planned to write myself into its history forever.
Today, Friday 13th September, the awards ceremony was held in the small local cinema, which is usually closed (I didn’t even know there was a cinema in Lamon), but they opened it especially for the competition.
On the big screen all evening they showed slides of all the pictures that had been submitted for the contest, of which there were over two hundred. The winners were announced and the slide show started in the second circle.
Alas… I’ve never won anything in competitions. That’s why I never enter them. Lamon is an exception. In other words, I didn’t make any money, they wouldn’t print a postcard with my picture on it, and I wouldn’t write myself into Lamon history.
But that was plan A, the easy one. Let’s move on to plan B, the hard one.
Text: Ivan Kuznetsov
Cover photo: me in front of Lamon panorama in September 2014 © Tatiana Kuznetsova
