Robyn MacRae
Australia’s certified forests are incredibly diverse and the winning entry in a national photo contest highlights the enjoyment they give to visitors from all walks of life. Source: Timberbiz
Australian Forestry Standard CEO Simon Dorries, commenting on the award, said the contest helped promote the economic, environmental and social aspects of forests.
The international photo contest inspired by PEFC attracted more than 7000 entries.
Robyn MacRae of Tumut, NSW, in the northwest foothills of the Snowy Mountains, was judged Australian winner. She receives a $500 cash voucher from AFS and enters the PEFC international competition with a chance to win a trip to Helsinki, Finland, to present at the PEFC General Assembly in November.
A farmer’s daughter, 2014 Churchill Fellow, teacher and keen photographer, Robyn was thrilled about her win in the contest – Experience Forests, Experience PEFC – that embraced such topics as forest landscapes to individual trees and plants, harvesters to families hiking in the woods, indigenous people to rural village life, and wooden buildings to PEFC-labelled products.
Robyn is married to Peter MacRae who works in radio services at the Forestry Corporation of NSW. She teaches design and technology at the TAFE NSW Riverina Institute in Tumut and has worked as a volunteer for Youth at Risk, a school-based program designed to help young people with special needs.
Her interest in photography began while growing up on her father’s farm – “beef, sheep … he tried everything” – extending to time as an art director on a magazine.
She captured the winning photo on her Cannon 7D camera – a picture taken during a snowfall among the towering sugar pines (Pinus lambertiana), the hidden gems in the Bago state forest, an incredibly diverse forest covering native alpine ash, historic plantation stands dating back to the 1920s and large areas of commercial radiate.
An entry from her workmate at TAFE, Fiona D’Alessandro, was highly commended by the judges, and was also taken in the Bago state forest. The photo features one of Robyn’s three children.
The AFPA gala industry dinner in Canberra on September 12 will showcase the Australian and international entries in the photo contest during a continuous slide show at the event.
